


Cinderblossom

by kashicanhaz



Series: Blossom Petals [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Dadko and Momtara, Domestic Fluff, E rating just to be safe, Eventual Smut, Everyone is just really soft okay, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Mangos, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, POV Zuko (Avatar), Parenthood, Sharing a Bed, Soft!Katara, Soft!Zuko, The Wisdom Of Age And Perspective, Unplanned Pregnancy, Vaginal Sex, lots of angst at the beginning and then it's just straight fluff I promise, offscreen misogyny, smut with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:06:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26704948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashicanhaz/pseuds/kashicanhaz
Summary: Katara and Zuko have a brief and disastrous affair the summer after she breaks up with Aang. Six years later, just when Zuko is starting to feel like he’s recovered, a new revelation turns his entire world on its head.***“Is that,” he swallows, “what you’d written to me about?”“Yes,” she says, her voice sounding just as broken.He sits down on the little stool made of snow, buries his face in his hands, and sobs.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Blossom Petals [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2115126
Comments: 184
Kudos: 935





	1. One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the ever-patient DisConsulate, without whom I would be nowhere.

It’s the absolute last thing he wants to be doing, inspecting the renovations to the harbor in the middle of a monsoon, but in retrospect he supposes he’s glad he did.

It might as well be the most important thing he’s ever done.

In that moment though, he’s miserable—it’s cold and damp, and the rain is coming down with such force that it’s splashing back up and soaking him from the knees down. The Master Stonemason in charge of escorting his inspection of the harbor has a tedious voice and a feeble sense of humor, but Zuko’s been putting this inspection off, and he’s run out of pressing things on his schedule with which he can delay it. As such, he’s almost giddy when the call of alarm goes up before he even knows what’s going on, simply relieved that something exciting is happening.

That’s when he spots her, standing alone in a rowboat, bending the water around her and barreling into the harbor at great speed.

_Katara_ , he thinks, and his heart skips a beat. He’d know her anywhere.

“Let her through,” he orders, and before he knows what he’s doing he’s running down to the dock, umbrella abandoned, the slap of his feet against the paving stones ringing in his ears. He makes it to the end just as she’s steadying her boat in the water, and he’s able to offer her a hand as she lurches out of the boat and onto the dock, falling to her knees.

She looks dreadful. She’s soaked to the bone, dark tendrils of hair that had escaped her braid plastered to her neck and face; her countenance is pale, she’s shivering, and her eyes are red like she’d been crying. He helps her upright and she throws her arms around him.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs, and her voice sounds raw. “I didn’t know where else to go. I was trying to go home, but I got so tired from all the bending and I didn’t have anything warm to wear and it’s almost winter—”

“Shh, hey, hey, it’s ok. You know you’re always welcome here.” He pulls back, holding her by the shoulders to get a look at her, and a pang of dread rips through his body as it dawns on him just how bad things must have been for her to bend herself across the open ocean in a rowboat without so much as a blanket to sleep under. He slips into crisis management mode as he turns to one of the servants who’d run after him, hollering that he get back under the umbrella. “Fetch Master Katara towels and a fresh change of clothes at once. Prepare a room for her in the guest wing. And get word to the kitchens to bring up some chicken-duck noodle soup as fast as possible, with _no_ spice. I don’t want a single pepper anywhere near it.”

She’s freezing, so he cups her small hands in his and brings them to his face, blowing a tiny lick of flame into them to warm her. Another shiver wracks her shoulders, and he thinks _to hell with propriety_ , wrenches off his shoulder pads and throws open the front of his outer robe, pulling her against his chest as he ratchets up his body heat for her.

“Clear my schedule for the rest of the day, and give me a late start in the morning,” he growls to his seneschal. “This meeting is adjourned,” he snaps at the gathered ministers, who glare after him with a mix of disapproval and surprise as he conveys her back into the palace, holding his robe over her shoulders as she clings to his side, nearly tripping over her feet in effort to keep up with his pace.

“Thank you, Zuko,” she whimpers.

He tugs her closer, trying not to thrill at the feeling of her hip pressed against his thigh, and strokes her hair. “Don’t mention it.”

***

For context, it must be said that he wants her. Has wanted her for years, has loved her maybe even, but the word makes him twitchy just to think about, so he doesn’t, even though hardly a day goes by when he doesn’t think of her, and even though saving her from his sister’s lightning strike is the easiest decision he’s ever made.

It’s not like he’s been pining for her, saving himself for her--far from it. If anything he’s sought to keep his bed warm and his thoughts busy for the sole purpose of getting her out of his head, his best friend’s sister and his other best friend’s girl. 

As he had with his swords and as he had with his bending, Zuko had applied himself to the study of bedsport. He fancied himself a man of no meager skill, if any of his partners were to be believed, but it seems no amount of practice can deaden the thrill of having her near, out of his reach though she may be.

And indeed she may be, but maybe not. Because she’s here, huddled under his arm and pressed against his chest, and where was Aang?

***

It isn’t until she’s dry, clothed and eating that he finally gets the story out of her. He’s drinking tea, having already taken his luncheon and having no taste for bland broth in any case.

“Aang and I had a fight.”

“Figured as much,” he grunts. “What happened?”

This is apparently the wrong thing to say, because she screws up her face again, and a fresh wave of tears wells on her eyelashes. He knows after Mai that saying “don’t cry” would _also_ be wrong, so he clams up, waiting, setting his hand on the cap of her shoulder.

“Nothing! That’s the problem! Nothing _at all_ has changed—he still expects me to follow him around, fixing his meals and washing his clothes, and he can drag us all over the world with no reprieve for _months_ looking for Air Nomads in hiding, but the minute I ask to go back to the North Pole to finish my healing training, or even say I want to go home to visit Gran-Gran, he acts like I’m abandoning him!” She palms at her eyes, sputtering, and he draws a handkerchief from his sleeve and offers it to her. “Thanks. I just…I’m glad he wants me nearby, I guess, but we spend all this time on _his_ mission, you know? What _he_ wants, and I feel like there’s no room for me to want anything different.”

He still can’t think of what to say, so he strokes her arm instead, frowning at her in what he hopes comes off as sympathy. Personally he can’t make sense of it--part of what made Katara so...well, _Katara_ , was that she had ambitions of her own. He can’t imagine someone loving her without loving those ambitions.

Too late, he realizes he’d stopped listening, and he tunes back in without any idea how she’d gotten where she is.

“And like, he says he loves me, and that I’m his girlfriend…but then he says all these things about how the monks said that _desire_ is a _poison_ for the spirit, and he says the way he loves me is _pure_ and _free_ and…” she swallows, shaking her head and blowing her nose into the handkerchief. “I’m sorry, Zuko, you don’t want to hear any of this.”

“No, it’s alright,” he hastens to reassure her, setting his hand on her knee, but then realizes he might have overcorrected and come off too eager. “I mean, if you want to tell me, I’ll listen.”

She pouts, sliding her hand into his and squeezing it. “You’re a good friend, Zuko,” she sniffles. She’s quiet for a long moment before she says, “It just seems like Aang doesn’t… _want_ me. Not like that. And I can’t pretend that doesn’t hurt.”

Zuko blinks. This does not make sense. He’s seen the way Aang looks at her, his adoration nearly as bald as his head, and it just doesn’t fit. How can someone with unfettered access to her, who loves her, who _knows_ she wants him back--how can he turn her away? And for what?

“Zuko?”

He sputters, looking back up from where he’d been staring at their joined hands, and her brows are pinched together. “You look like someone spat in your tea.”

“Uh,” he begins, and he thinks of all his elocution lessons he’d had since becoming Fire Lord, and just how well they’re serving him. “Um. Just. Confused, I guess. I mean, like...did Aang get kicked in the head?”

She frowns. “What?”

“I mean,” and he cards his hand through his hair--he’s doing a terrible job comforting her, but she hasn’t let go of his hand on her knee, yet, so maybe… “He’d have to be crazy, Katara. Not to want you, I mean.”

The frown slips away, leaving a smirk in its wake, and that’s better, he thinks. “I _think_ there was a compliment in there somewhere.”

“I mean, I don’t want to be weird Katara, but…” he trails off, his face flushing, and he’s sure he’s given himself away--but when he looks up at her she’s smiling, really smiling, and he thinks that’s worth any amount of embarrassment he could endure.

***

The rain doesn’t let up, so he can’t take her for a walk through the gardens, or down to the wharf, or take her anywhere nice really, so he makes them another pot of tea and lets her trounce him at Pai Sho, making her swear never to tell his Uncle of his shame. He has the kitchens whip up a second portion of his supper without quite so many peppers, and they take their meals in the storm viewing pavilion, which is as close as he can get to dinner with a view.

He says as much and she laughs, even though it’s hardly funny, the clear sound of her voice ringing off the stone floor of the pavilion, and he has two thoughts in very quick succession: First, she is so beautiful it makes his teeth hurt; and second, he is so, entirely fucked.

***

She kisses him on the cheek when he walks her back to her chambers, and he goes rigid, clenching his jaw and hands to keep from reaching for her. It’s enough to stall him out for a full second, and when he blinks back into himself her eyes are wide with worry. His pulse hammers as he skims a lock of hair back behind her ear and bids her a tight and rasping “Goodnight.”

He lopes back to the royal apartments, nerves jangling and his stomach in knots, and for once he thinks he might actually be able to bend lightning, the way his energy buzzes in his blood. He has his attendants draw him a cold bath, and resolves to spend the rest of his evening reading over proposals for agricultural subsidies, so as to keep himself from nipping at her heels like a dog. Just to be safe, though, he tells his guards that she is permitted entry should she need him for any reason, and then spends the next two hours jumping at every little sound that comes from the hallway in the vain hope that it’s her.

He’s dressing for bed when he hears an unmistakable knock at the door, much more timid than any of his servants would be, and hope punches him in the gut, hard and fast, before she pokes her head in.

“Can I talk to you?”

“Of course,” he says, and his voice feels gravelly in his throat. He suddenly becomes keenly aware of his own state of undress--wearing only his sleep pants, his chest bare--but then she steps entirely into the room, wearing a brain-melting little nightgown that stops well above the knee, a silk robe tossed casually over her bare shoulders. He swallows.

“I just...I can’t sleep. I feel like I overstepped a few hours ago, at my doorway, and…” she looks him up and down, her brows creasing and a frown deepening on her face. He, meanwhile, can’t get his jaw off the floor and he feels like such a _moron_ , because this, ostensibly, is the part he’s practiced: the part where the girl invites herself into his chambers, barely dressed, and he…

“...and I can see that I’m overstepping now. I’ll go. I’ll get a good night’s sleep and then I’ll be gone in the morning. I’m sorry I--”

He crosses the room in three hasty strides and grabs her wrist before she can reach the door. He’s maybe a little rough as he grabs her, so he doesn’t yank her closer the way he wants to, doesn’t crush his mouth to hers, just holds her there, eyes locked and chests heaving. He pulls his head out of his ass without a second to spare and sputters, “please don’t. Don’t go. Just...let’s talk. Just don’t go.”

She blinks, and does not wrench her hand away. “Okay.”

“You didn’t overstep.”

“Alright.”

She still looks like she’s about to bolt, eyes wide and searching his, so he lets go of her wrist to lace their fingers together and tucks an errant curl behind her ear. Her lashes flutter as he takes another step closer.

“I _want_ you here, Katara,” he says in a whisper, slipping his arms around her waist, and she releases the breath she’d been holding. The last of her trepidation melts away and she turns to face him, stepping into his space and resting her free hand over the scar on his chest.

“I’ve always meant to ask you why you did it,” she murmurs, and she must feel the way his heart beats against his ribs as she skims the edges of his scar with her fingertips.

“You know why.”

“I don’t,” she says, searching his eyes again. She presses her palm flat over his heart, sliding her other hand over his shoulder, over the back of his neck. “I have my suspicions, but I don’t know for sure.”

“And is that why you came here?” he asks, his voice a husky whisper. “To find out for sure?”

He watches her eyes flick to his lips and back, and when he meets her gaze now there’s heat in it. The sconces along the wall start to gutter as she wears away at his control, biting her lip and drawing her face closer, and _spirits_ he wants this, wants to wrap her up and keep her here with him forever, tucked away from the prying eyes of the world.

“Where did you leave things with Aang?” he rasps, and she startles a little at the question, brows pinching.

“I--we’re over. Broken up. I made that clear.”

“ _Good_ ,” he says, taking her chin between thumb and forefinger and swooping into claim her mouth in a searing, bruising kiss.

They don’t do a lot of talking after that, but Katara starts to make these breathy whimpers into his mouth, and Zuko does everything he can think of to keep her making them. She lets him act out all his tenderest fantasies with her, lets him show her the way to her own pleasure, lets him show her how to give him pleasure too. Agni knows he’s trying to be gentle, trying to go slow, but she makes it terribly hard to think past the present moment, and when she begs him to take her and make her his, he is entirely powerless to deny her.

When they finally collapse in the small hours of the night, gasping and sated, he rolls onto his side to face her, searching her lidded eyes for hesitation when he says, “stay with me.”

“Tonight?”

“And after.” He kisses the tip of her nose. “Let me keep you for a little while.”

And something in her eyes goes sharp at that, like maybe that hadn’t come off as romantic as he’d hoped, but then he strokes his thumb over the juncture of her thighs, wringing another fluttering sigh out of her, and she goes pliant. “Alright,” she hums, languid, her thighs falling open again in response. “You can keep me. For now.”

And so he sinks his fingers in, kissing his way from her jaw to her stomach, and tries to make _for now_ into _forever_ with all the devotion of an alchemist trying to turn lead into gold.

***

It’s an unusually good time for her to visit; they’re deep enough into peacetime that any treaty-wrangling has tapered off, and for once it seems his ministers can handle their departments on their own. It’s half the reason he’d been inspecting the harbor in the first place when she’d arrived, and now that she’s here, he decides it’s the perfect time to take the vacation his closest advisors had been begging him to take.

He takes her to Ember Island, because of course he does--it’s where he first fell for her, he realizes, as he falls for her all over again. They talk about everything and nothing, spend a shocking amount of time undressed, and if he doesn’t get quite as much rest, strictly speaking, as his advisors had hoped, well...you wouldn’t hear him complaining.

The spell is broken a little bit when they have to return, and though ten days of sex and sunlight have done wonders for his mood, he misses the intimacy desperately. Something about her still makes him nervous, like she might reject him somehow, even though she’s glued to him every second she can be, it seems. He can’t explain it, really, but there’s some part of her that feels distant, cut off from him, and he doesn’t know how to ask her about it, or make it better.

It doesn’t take long for her to get bored of knocking around the palace without a thing to do, so she starts to take herself on long walks around the city, and day-long hikes into the caldera nearby. His duties pick back up and he runs out of excuses to duck out of meetings in favor of spending time with her, and in time he stops being able to find her even when he does. He’s at a loss--he feels her slipping through his fingers, but he hasn’t the faintest idea of how to reel her back in.

He finds himself obsessed by dark fantasies that she spends her days spilling her soul to another man, that there is someone else she would rather have as her confidante, and it drives him halfway mad. He’s always starving for her when she appears at nightfall, barely dressed in his chambers, and the madness only ebbs as he possesses her, marks her, makes her cry out his name, drives any possible thought of another man from her mind.

This wouldn’t be a problem if he felt like he ever knew what to say to her, but talking to Katara, his lover, is even more difficult than talking to Katara, his friend--which had never come easily to him in the first place. She’ll have moods where she shuts him out, insisting that nothing’s bothering her, even though he catches her staring glassy-eyed out the window with a tightness in her face and he knows, he _knows_ something is wrong.

He’s inspired one afternoon to treat her to a romantic dinner by the turtleduck pond, and so he cuts all his meetings short--his agriculture minister seems particularly put out by his dismissal, but that’s not his problem. If the man can’t do his job, Zuko isn’t about to do it for him. The whole encounter almost ruins his mood.

It’s unseasonably cool for August, and there’s a breeze coming up from the ocean. He has the palace staff make all her favorites, though it’s a bit of a scramble with the notice he’s giving them, but he wants to do something nice for her. 

When he shows up outside her chambers to bring her to dinner, though, she doesn’t answer. He can hear her stirring inside, so he nudges the door open, and his heart drops. She’s curled up on her duvet, crying quietly; when he treads on her threshold her head whips up, eyes red and her hair a mess. The sight of him makes her cry harder.

“Go away,” she snarls, collapsing back into her bed, and no, _no no no_ , this is not how he wanted this evening to go.

“Hey, no, don’t cry.” _Shit_. He knows better than to say that, and from the sound she makes, he’s right to regret it. He sweeps into the room and alights on her bed, perching beside her and stroking a hand over her shoulders. She flinches away from him with a sob.

He swallows. “What’d I do this time?” He tries to keep his voice light, make a joke of it, but it doesn’t land; she pulls her face up from her duvet, red and shining and still somehow beautiful, and fixes him with a baleful look.

“Nothing,” she chokes. “It’s just--it’s nothing, it’s stupid. I’m just...homesick, is all.”

Zuko doesn’t buy it for a second. “Homesick. Of course.”

She glares at him. “Don’t look at me like that!”

“Like what?!”

“Like I’m--like I’m _abandoning_ you! Like I’m not allowed to be homesick!”

“Of course you’re allowed! I just don’t think that you _are_!”

She sits up, eyes flashing for a second like she’s going to fight him, but then that cool detachedness slides over her, and she closes her eyes, smooths back her hair and sighs heavily. “I’d just really like to be alone right now Zuko, if that’s okay.”

A hot stab of rejection flares in his stomach. He almost wishes she’d chosen to fight. “I was hoping you’d join me for dinner,” he says miserably. “By the duck pond. I had the kitchen make ocean kumquats.”

This breaks her into tears again, but this time she’s curling into him, sobbing into his shoulder, and it’s all he can do to hold her up, stroke her back, and not say anything to make it worse. She cries herself out and they shuffle out into the garden--he feels wrung out and miserable, and it's a little too cold out when they finally sit down.

But even though she mopes all through dinner, she crashes into him with desperation afterwards, all teeth and tongue and expert fingers, and as they lay panting in his bed, hazy in the cool-down, he thinks he doesn’t know any other way to have her than desperately, which is better, he reasons, than not having her at all.

***

Then Aang shows up, and ruins everything.

Later, when he’s grown up and more honest with himself, he’ll recognize that it had already been ruined, that they’d been ruining it bit by bit with every unsaid word and every misread mood, every slight and every grudge--but he’s young, and angry, and he needs someone to blame, so he blames Aang.

“Is it true?” he growls, whirling into her room and slamming the door behind him. “You’re leaving?!”

“I’ll go wherever I want,” she huffs, folding her arms on the windowsill. “I’m not in a cage.”

“ _With him_ ?!” he sneers, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice. “You’re leaving me for _him_?”

She closes her eyes, sighing, and suddenly she looks so very tired. “It’s...not like that, Zuko. He’s just taking me home, and then he’ll be back on his way. We haven’t...reconciled, or anything.” She sighs again, setting her face in her hands.

“Good,” he growls, gripping her arm and wrenching her into an embrace. “Because you’re mine. I won’t share you.”

She twists out of his grasp, glaring daggers at him. “I don’t belong to you, or him, or anybody!” Her eyes look dangerous, but he won’t back away from her, not when she’s like this--he’s always loved her best like this, when she’s angry, all power and heat and searing beauty. “I told you I wanted to go home weeks ago, but you keep--you keep looking at me _like that_ ,” she accuses, jabbing a finger into his chest. “You keep making me feel guilty for wanting to leave!”

“Because I can’t _stand_ it when you’re out of my sight!” he hisses, emotion clawing at him. “Every moment you’re away. I can’t bear it. All I want is to have you here with me.” He shivers, but from rage or vulnerability he can’t tell.

“Well, you’re going to have to learn to stand it, because I’m not a potted plant, Zuko!” It lands like a slap, and he feels tears well as she crowds him, her nose almost brushing his. “I’m not just going to sit around looking pretty, waiting for you to take precious time out of your day to fuck me!” 

He grabs her wrist, trying to glower, but he knows he looks wounded, and her eyes flash--she sees it too--and goes in for the kill.

“What happens to me when your advisors tell you it’s time you took a wife and had an heir, hm? Because I won’t stand by being whispered about while you go on and have the honorable family you’re supposed to. I deserve a shot at my own happiness, too!”

_Then let me be your shot at happiness,_ he wants to say, _the way you’re my shot at mine._

But he’s a coward for a single hopeless second, gaping at her like a fish, and then the moment’s gone--she turns away from him, crossing her arms, and he knows she’s crying now--why can’t he stop making her cry?

So he comforts her the one way he knows how, sliding himself against her back and placing supplicant kisses where her neck meets her shoulders. He nips gently at her favorite spot and she melts back against him, like ice in spring.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice breaking in between kisses. “I want you to be happy too. I wanted you to be happy here.”

“Zuko, please don’t…”

“I can be different, Katara,” he begs into her neck, snaking his arms around her ribs. “Just tell me how you need me to be, and I can do it, I promise.”

But she’s shaking her head, and he feels her choke on another sob. “No, Zuko, you can’t.”

“At least let me _try_.”

“Please,” she whimpers, twisting in his arms to face him. “Please don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

“But I’m not ready to let you go,” he pleads, voice breaking, shifting his hands to grip her hips as panic starts to creep its way up his spine, but then her arms come up to hold him, stroking his hair and his back, and she places a kiss on his ruined cheekbone before whispering in his ear.

“I’m not gone yet.”

And so he crashes into her, lips and teeth and howling desperation, cleaves to her, makes love to her like he’s trying to fuse their bodies together, and maybe he is. She meets him with a fury of her own, radiant and all-consuming, clawing into his back until she draws blood. He hopes it scars; if it’s the only way he can hold onto her touch then he’ll take it, he’ll take anything she gives him.

The night passes in cycles—fuck, fight, cry, repeat—but in the morning they’re back where they started. She takes off just after sunrise, the last searing kiss still wet on his lips as he watches her turn away, hugging her knees in Appa’s saddle, and it dawns on him with a flood of horror that he never answered her question about the lightning scar.

_Because I love you_ , he never said. Not once.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember the angst tag? I do.  
> Praise as ever to DisConsolate.

Despair gives way to cold rage as dusk gives way to darkness, and the mere thought of her is enough to set him shaking, teeth grinding, incandescent with fury. She left him. She  _ left _ him. He’d have made her his Queen and she left him, and for what? Some glaciers and some salted seal jerky? She hadn’t even had the decency to hate him first, or to make him hate her--she just left, like it hadn’t meant a thing to her at all.

He gets a letter from her two months later, and in a blind rage he burns it unopened. He regrets it almost instantly, a sick longing stealing over him like a fever, but he’s too proud to write her back and ask her to repeat herself. He tells himself it’s better this way, not to know what she would have said, what more damage she could have done him.

She doesn’t write a second one. 

***

A year passes without word from the Southern Water Tribe, which is both a blessing and a curse. He finds himself in thought spirals, staring at the ceiling well after midnight, wanting desperately to know that she’s okay while also praying to Agni that she’s sharing this anguish, that she’s in just as much pain as him.

Aang passes through every so often, making a point of staying the night when he does. Zuko knows he’s being checked on, but he’s rapidly losing strength enough to put on a brave face. He comes off angry, because even after all the growing up he’s done, he’d rather be angry than hurt.

Aang doesn’t say anything about his sour mood, but he keeps his visits short; just before he’s about to take off again Zuko ambushes him with the questions.

“Have you heard from Katara lately?” He tries to come off casual, but the tremor in his voice gives him away. “Do you know how she’s doing?” 

The Avatar frowns at him, folding his arms across his chest. “I don’t see why you’re so interested.”

He’s taken aback at that. “I have a right to be interested!”

“With the way you’ve been treating her, Zuko, I don’t think that you do.”

“The way  _ I’ve _ been treating her?!” he howls, incredulous. “I  _ begged _ her to stay! I promised I’d work on...whatever, what was wrong with us.  _ She _ left  _ me. _ ”

Aang gives him an incredulous look, and sighs. “Look, I don’t know what happened between you two, alright? All I know is that you both keep asking me for news when you won't _ talk to each other _ . And I know I’m supposed to be the bridge between worlds or whatever, but if you two had a bridge and you burned it, that’s not my problem.”

Zuko swallows, trying not to pout. Aang’s right, because of course he is, he’s always right about this kind of stuff, but that doesn’t mean Zuko’s got to like it.

“If I promise not to ask again, will you tell me what you know?”

He sighs again. “All I know is that she’s headed up North. She’s finishing her training, they’re in good hands. But if you want more than that you’ve got to write her yourself.” And with that, he yip-yips off into the clouds, and Zuko is alone again.

***

Another year passes.

Uncle blows in from Ba Sing Se and announces he will be staying for a month or more. Zuko isn’t sure if he missed his letter, or if Uncle never sent one, but it doesn’t matter--there’s always room for family in the palace.

“You’re moping, Nephew.” He has frogmarched Zuko out of his office for tea by the turtleduck pond, and the late spring cinderbossoms have just started to fall, coating every surface in the garden with a skiff of white and orange petals. He goes to take a drink, and discovers a blossom in his teacup. “You’ve been moping for two years.”

“That’s just my brooding charm.”

“Is that what they’re calling it at court?”

Zuko sighs, plucking out the blossom with his fingers and flinging it at his feet. “I’m fine, Uncle.”

“You’re not.”

“This is normal for me, now. I’ve made my peace with it.” He takes the crown out, sets it down on the table and rakes his hands through his hair. It’s getting long.

Iroh sips his tea, regarding him. “Why don’t you tell me what happened,” he says gently. 

“It’s ancient history by this point,” Zuko murmurs, suddenly shy. He doesn’t want to admit she was here for less than a hundred days, and that he still hasn’t recovered.

“History is the study of how we got to be where we are,” Uncle says. “Without history, we would never know which way was forward. Now. Start at the beginning.”

Even though it’s only Uncle, he hesitates. The words are slow to come at first--for years this has been a private narrative, another story he can tell himself about his own inadequacy--but soon he’s talking so fast his mouth goes dry. He tells him about the caves under Ba Sing Se, and the Western Air Temple, and the mission to find her mother’s killer. He tells him about how his longing felt like an open wound, and how even after she’d forgiven him, even after he’d taken a bolt of lightning for her, she always seemed just outside his reach, a little too good for him, and then she’d flown off into the sunset with Aang and proved him right. 

But then when she’d appeared in the harbor, desperate and shivering, and he’d given her comfort and convinced her to stay, he’d felt a joy he hadn’t known he could feel. He spares Uncle the specifics, but he sketches in the heat, the thrill, and the love that had underpinned it all, that had remained even when they stopped talking except to fight, that crushes him still under the waste of it. Her silence, his jealousy, and the aching, mismatched efforts they’d both made to meet each other in the middle, only to find that they didn’t quite fit together as well as their bodies did. 

Uncle hums thoughtfully when he’s finished, sipping his tea. The cinderblossoms spiral through the air around him, clusters of ruffling petals, livid peach and orange on the inside, with their outsides pale as the polar snow. 

“You have known a rare love, Nephew, and you are right to cherish its memory.” Then Iroh frowns, and Zuko knows he isn’t going to like what he has to say next. “I’m only sorry you were so young when you found it. Sometimes love is like a cinderblossom tree...”  _ Here we go _ , Zuko thinks, but he keeps his mouth shut out of respect. “If it blooms too early, a late winter frost can sap its beauty for a whole season, and stunt its growth. Some trees never recover. Many do, with time…” he trails off.

Then Iroh fixes him with a sharp look. “...If they get over their stubborn pride and talk to one another.”

He grimaces. “You overextended the metaphor.”

“Because you are the most literal-minded person I have ever met, and anything not said plainly sails straight over that five-pointed crown of yours.” He frowns at him. “Lady Katara could have done to remember that, I think, but I’m not advising her. I’m advising you.”

“Advising me to do what? Try to win her back?” The tea set clatters as he bumps into the table, gesturing wildly. “It’s been years! She knows where I stood, I made that plain. If she wanted me, she’d--”

“You misunderstand me Nephew. I’m not saying Lady Katara will want to reconcile--in fact, I’d be rather surprised if she did, the way you ended things. What I’m saying,” and he reaches across the table to grip his shoulders, shaking Zuko a little bit. “Is that it mattered, and that’s wonderful, but you never got any closure. And I’m saying that if you do, maybe it will be a little easier to cherish the memory of having known her without carrying the pain around with it.”

And so Zuko begins what becomes a periodic habit of staring at a blank page, waiting for words that won’t come until his brush goes dry. It’s a waste of time, and even though he truly, desperately wants it all to stop hurting, he can’t figure out how to tell her that he burned her letter without reading it. Stacked against all the terrible things he’s done to her, for some reason it feels like the worst, and he can’t stand the thought of telling her that he’s let her down once again. So he stares at the page and lets his brush dry out.

***

Another year passes, and he still hasn’t taken another lover into his bed, not since Katara. 

His advisors start to pester him about marriage, and force him to go on a handful of chaperoned dates. His agriculture minister is particularly invested in these schemes, angling to position his niece in the sights of Zuko’s affections, and while she’s a lovely girl, it’s no use. He cannot bear his soul to anyone, not after he’d let her see the darkest parts of him, and she’d flown away. 

He throws himself into his work, loses himself in the weeds on projects, becomes more of an expert on rural infrastructure than his Minister of the Interior. Among Fire Nation society, he gains the reputation of being something of a bore. This suits him; the fewer suitors he has to dodge, the better. 

***

Another year passes.

He couldn’t say how, but it gets easier to bear. He goes weeks without thinking about her, and when he does, there’s hardly any pain. Wistfulness, maybe, but he was always prone to that.

He will always regret not being more forward, not speaking his mind in a way that comes much more easily to him now. He will always regret not telling her that he loved her--even if she hadn’t returned the sentiment, it would have saved him years of pain if he’d known for sure.

He sits by the turtleduck pond and watches the ducklings grow. He is twenty-four years old, eight years into his reign; the love of his life has come and gone, and there’s a security in that. He’s been cut to the bone and he’s survived, and so whatever else the world throws at him, he knows he’ll come out the other end well enough.

Even still, he wouldn’t trade that summer for anything.

***

Another year passes.

***

Another year passes. He receives an invitation to the South Pole for the first Southern Lights festival in a century, and it’s slated to be a great international to-do. Officially it comes from her brother, but she’s squeezed in a personal note at the end.

_ I really do hope you can make it. It would be lovely to see you again. _

And this feeling that slams into him is why he burned the first letter; it’s barely a single line and he already feels he cannot breathe, he’s seeing stars, he needs to sit down. She wants to see him. He thought he’d worked past all this, that he was beyond the reach of such strong feelings, but Agni, she  _ wants _ to  _ see him _ . 

He’s sick with dread. Six years of healing he’s done, just to have the wound ripped open again, because he’d never accounted for the thought that she might miss him too, even in the smallest of ways. It had always seemed too good to hope for, but now, holding proof of it in his hands, he’s a wreck.

Not wreck enough to deny her, though. Even after all this time, he doesn’t think he ever could.

Would they even recognize each other anymore, he wonders? He’s grown up considerably in the last six years, and he imagines she has too. It occurs to him, with a bolt of something like fear, that she ought to have found a husband by now—but surely, hopefully, someone would have told him if she had?

***

The journey is its own kind of torture. He’s seasick for the first time in his life, though he suspects it might have nothing to do with the sea. 

Sokka’s greeting is formal and cool, laced with what Zuko can only assume is bitterness. Katara bows behind him, uncharacteristically shy, as though she were forbidden by some custom from speaking. She hangs back in the party when he is shown to his lodgings, and when he turns around she is gone, like smoke in the wind.

He tries to tell himself it’s fine, that he’ll see her tonight at the banquet, but there’s a gnawing in the pit of his stomach, a longing like a hunger, and he reminds himself that if he is very good, and very careful, he might just survive this.

***

King Kuei gets the seat of honor to Sokka’s right, and even though Zuko is seated next to Aang he understands it for the slight it is. He’s come to wonder, in time, at Sokka’s grudge—if Katara hadn’t hated him when she left, then why does Sokka hate him now? Maybe he knows enough to know he’d taken his sister’s virtue, and that was reason enough for his ire? He certainly wouldn’t put it past him—Zuko’s familiar enough with Water Tribe custom to understand that their culture took a dim view of women’s expressions of sexuality, but he’d have thought Katara would have beaten the worst of such prejudices out of her brother by now.

Katara is seated further away in the banquet hall, surrounded by people of little note, which puzzles him. Surely she belongs up near the head of the table, with the rest of the respected dignitaries? In any case it makes her more difficult to stare at, which is both a blessing and a curse; Aang catches him craning his neck more than once, and tries to distract him with some funny story about one of his adventures, but Zuko can’t keep his attention on the man. He pokes at his stew, no room for his appetite among the wolf-bats in his stomach.

Aang is called away at some point, and he’s hardly vacated his spot for a minute before someone settles in his seat.

It’s her.

He gulps.

“Hey,” she says gently, and though she doesn’t touch him the tone of her voice feels like a caress. “I’m so glad you came.”

“Me too,” he says, feeling himself flushing already.  _ Agni _ , could he not keep it together for a single second?

“I was worried you wouldn’t.”

The crease in her brows makes his voice go dry. “Why?”

She looks at her hands. “You never…I sent you a letter, right after I left. I don’t know if you ever got it, but if you did, you never responded.”

He feels a pang of dread, and his lips feel suddenly dry. “It arrived. I...I never read it.”

Her voice is very small. “Oh?”

“I burnt it. I’m so sorry, Katara,” he’s trying to keep his voice down, but he’s tripping over himself to get the words out. “I’m so--I was so angry with you for leaving, but I regretted it immediately, and I was so ashamed of myself that I never had the courage to write you back to say that I had, and I--”

But she’s not angry like he thought she would be, or if she is, she’s gotten better at hiding it. She just looks dazed. “Oh, well. It’s alright, Zuko, I forgive you. I’ve got something I need to talk to you about, then. Find me after the meal, okay?”

“Alright,” he says, blinking at her, casting about for something to say, but she’s already getting up, shuffling back over to her seat with her eyes downcast, and he wonders why she looks so shy, and so ashamed of herself.

***

It’s even harder to keep his eyes off her after that. He’s not sure what he’s watching for until he sees it; a young woman from the tribe comes up behind her to whisper in her ear, and she murmurs her excuses to the guests around her as she stands and swishes out of the tent.

He doesn’t even realize he’s following her until the cold hits his face.

She follows the woman around the back of the gathering hall, and he skulks along in the shadows, staying close to the side of the building. The woman brings her to a small child: a little girl perched on a stool made of snow and sniffling bravely, idly kicking her little feet. Katara thanks the woman and crouches down, opening her arms to the child.

“What’s wrong, snowflake?”

“Mommy—” is all he hears the child say before his mind whites out, and he gets a look at her little face.

She’s pale, by water tribe standards, but her hair is darker. He’s not very well acquainted with children, but from her size he’d put her at about four, maybe five years old.

He’s not close enough to see her eyes, but he thinks if he takes a single step he’ll trip and reveal himself, even with Katara facing away from him as she is. His heart kicks into double-time as he watches them; Katara hefts her up and the little girl buries her face into the crook of her neck. She strokes her back and hums something soothing, bouncing her a little, and the child quiets her fussing enough to rub her eyes and look up.

She spots him, and he freezes.

“Mommy, who’s that?”

Katara turns around, and he swallows. It makes sense the child would be curious, if she’d been brought up here—she probably knew everyone in the tribe already, and outsiders would prompt questions.

He can’t meet Katara’s eyes, even as he hears her say to the child, “that’s Fire Lord Zuko. Remember I told you he would be visiting?”

He looks up, sees Katara looking at the child on her hip, but the child’s eyes are fixed on him. There’s something eerily familiar in her little round face, and a warm panic starts to bubble in his chest.

“Do you want to go say hello?” Katara asks her child, and the child thinks this over for a moment before she nods, and her mother lets her down.

Katara walks her halfway to where he stands rooted to the spot, holding her little hand. He crouches down as they approach, as he’d seen Katara do, and as she draws up before him Katara says to the girl, “remember, like we practiced?” And the girl presses her thumb to her palm and bows, a proper Fire Nation greeting.

When she looks back up at him, he notes that her eyes, so wide with wonder, are a very familiar shade of gold.

Zuko returns the bow, deeper than the Fire Lord should, and reaches out his hand to the girl.

“What’s your name, Princess?”

He hears Katara’s shuddering intake of breath before the girl takes his hand and answers. “My name is Izumi.”

Tears well in his eyes, but he swallows them back. “Izumi. That’s a beautiful name.”

“Other kids say it’s weird,” she says, scuffing her foot in the snow. His heart clenches, and he gives her little hand a squeeze.

“It doesn’t sound weird to me,” he murmurs. It’s a miracle he can speak at all. “That’s a name from my language, Izumi. It means Fountain.”

The little girl giggles. “That’s funny. I’m not a waterbender.”

“No?” he croaks. “Do you bend something else?”

She looks over her shoulder at her mother, who nods. “You can show him,” she says.

Izumi tugs off her mitten and lights a tiny flame in her palm, her face looking very much like she’s doing something she’s not supposed to and loving every second of it.

The tears do come, then. He cannot stop them from sliding down his cheeks, even though they make the cold bite harder. He slides off his mitten and opens his own hand to reveal a flame, mirroring hers.

“Whoa! Mom, look! He’s a firebender too!”

“I know, sweetheart. That’s why I was excited for you to meet him.”

He drinks in the sight of the two of them, Izumi chattering animatedly to her mother, and while he can see Katara in her daughter’s golden skin and the expressions on her face, he has to admit that the likeness is…uncanny. Apart from her hairstyle and her complexion, she’s the spitting image of him. Not Azula, or Ursa, or Ozai, even. She looks like him.

Too soon, the little girl dashes back to her games with the other children, and they are silent for a minute as they watch her go, polar winds whipping at their hair.

“Is that,” he swallows, “what you’d written to me about?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice sounding just as broken.

He sits down on the little stool made of snow, buries his face in his hands, and sobs.

***

He doesn’t go back to the banquet, and neither does she. They stand out in the cold, an arm’s breadth apart as the southern lights dance above them, and over folded arms she tells him her story.

She’d barely been home two weeks when her moon’s blood didn’t come, but when it didn’t come for a second month, she knew. Sokka was livid when she told him--angry with her, at first, because she’d been so careless, and then later with him, because he never responded to the letter telling him he was going to be a father.

Her brother, ever with the hairbrained schemes, came up with the plan to send her North. She’d tell the people of her sister tribe that the baby’s father had perished from a hunting accident, which was part of why she wanted to complete her training to become a healer. She’d played the part of widow very well.

It was a little after a year since she’d arrived in the North that holes started to appear in her story--Izumi’s eyes turned from gray to gold, and her skin was ghostly pale for a water tribe child, even though every healer in the North Pole said she was healthy as could be. People started to talk, to doubt her, and suddenly she found it harder to get people to respect her, Master waterbender and friend of the Avatar though she may be.

Then Izumi, at a prodigious two-and-a-half, made a tiny flame on the playground when some of the older children scared her, and the whole charade went up in smoke. The Northerners refused to speak to her, except to call her a harlot or worse. Her masters stopped answering her questions in her lessons, and it became apparent that she’d make no more progress there. Poor little Izumi couldn’t understand why nobody wanted to play with her anymore. When the thaws came, they’d left for the South Pole on the first boat.

It wasn’t much better back in the South. Being sister to the chief offered some social protection, and her reputation as a bending master and diplomat meant more to her people than it had to her sister tribe, but it was clear she was still, first and foremost, a fallen woman. No man wanted a  _ firebender’s leavings _ , someone had told her, and he is so full of rage on her behalf he nearly melts the wall of the building beside them.

“Why didn’t you reach back out to me?” he asks her, shaking, when she finishes her story. 

She shrugs, and the gesture is sad and dejected in a way he’d never seen her act before, and it scares him, how natural it looks on her now.

“I thought I’d had your answer,” she sighs. “Aang said you were angry with me for a very long time.

“I was,” he admits, swallowing. “But I don’t--if I’d known, I don’t think I would have been. Not like I was.”

She hums. “Well, there’s no use dwelling on it. What’s done is done.”

The wind whips at them, and he feels her pulling away from him again, and it feels like the first time, right before she left, and he won’t make the same mistake twice.

“Come back with me,” he says, grabbing her wrist. “Both of you. Come live at the palace.”

She frowns, withdrawing her hand from his grasp. “Zuko, I could never--”

“She’s my daughter too, Katara,” he says, voice breaking. “And she’s my heir. Or she will be, once I acknowledge her.”

That stalls her. She looks to the sky, blinking, a grimace on her lips. “How could--Zuko, she’s  _ half water tribe, _ you don’t really think--”

“Even the conservatives in the Fire Nation would be relieved for someone other than a distant cousin to be next in line--even if she’s five years old, and  _ half water tribe _ .”

“She’d be a stain on your reputation,” she says, sullen. “And so would I.”

“I think my reputation can handle it,” he says drily, clearing his throat as the joke falls flat. “But she’s the only family I have,” he whispers. “Apart from Uncle. And you know he’d dote on her.”

That makes her smile, though it’s a sad one, and he thinks he can see tears in the corners of her eyes when she says, “He’d spoil her rotten.”

They laugh together for a single, shuddering moment, and his chest swells painfully in response.

“We wouldn’t have to see each other much, if you didn’t want,” he swallows. “I’ll stay out of your way. Anything you want, if it’s in my power, it’s yours, just...please let me raise my daughter. Let her grow up somewhere she’ll be loved, and treated like the princess she is.”

That seems to strike something in her, and she closes her eyes, biting her lips for a long moment before she lets out the breath she’d been holding. She stands up. “I’ll think about it. You’ll have my answer before you leave.”

“Can we tell her who I am, in any case?” he begs, grabbing her wrist one more time. Her gaze is pitying as she slowly, gently wrenches her hand away. “I want,” he clears his throat. “I want her to know that her father loves her.”

“We can,” she sighs. “But it’s getting late, and I’ve got to get her to bed. We’ll find you tomorrow. Goodnight, Zuko.”

He sits in the snow and watches her walk away, clenching his fists and his jaw, so overcome with joy and sorrow and regret and love, love more than anything, that he can hardly move.

***

He meets them behind her family dwelling after breakfast, even though there is some formal ceremony he’s supposed to be attending--he doesn’t really care, anymore.

Katara leads her out by the hand, and she gives him a radiant smile and wave, and he feels his heart breaking. He’s never known it to feel so full. 

“We’ve got something to tell you, snowflake,” Katara says, kneeling down beside her daughter. She whispers in the little girl’s ear, and her golden eyes go wide.

“Really?” Izumi asks her mother, suddenly shy as she looks at him, kneeling before her in the snow. 

“Really,” Katara assures her. Izumi pinches her brow together--he’s seen that exact expression on her mother’s face more times than he can count--and she takes a bold step forward. 

She has a stuffed bear in her arms, though it’s clearly seen better days, and she hugs it for comfort as she approaches.

“Daddy?” she says experimentally, squinting at him and sizing him up. “Is that really you?” He chokes back a happy sob as he nods, taking her little mittened hands in his.

“Uh-huh,” is all he can manage around the lump in his throat, and he strokes his hand over her hair. “It’s nice to finally meet you, sweetheart.”

“Where’ve you been, Daddy?”

And it’s the first of many impossible questions she’ll ask him, and it breaks his heart a little, the way she already sounds wary and betrayed.

“I’ve been in my home, in the Fire Nation,” he says, and he kisses her mittened hands. “I didn’t--I didn’t know you were here, cinderblossom. Otherwise I would have been here too.”

She turns that over in her mind, hugging her bear to her chest. “Okay,” she says. Lightning-quick, she tugs off a mitten and puts her tiny hand over his scar, and though he startles he manages to keep himself from jumping at the warmth of it.

“What happened?”

He swallows, trying to figure out what to say. “I got burned when I was a kid.”

She frowns. “Didn’t it hurt?”

“Yeah,” he rasps. “It did hurt, but it’s better now.”

“Mommy can make the hurt go away.”

Katara snorts behind her, and he gives them both a watery smile.

“She’s done all she can for me,” he says. “But I promise it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

She considers this for a long moment before leaning forward and bumping a clumsy kiss into his scarred cheek. He can hardly feel it on his skin, but something inside him ruptures, and he scoops her up into his arms and cradles her against his chest, kissing her hair and trying not to sob, even as Katara dabs at her eyes behind her.

Her little arms come around his neck, and she nuzzles into his chest, and he knows, then, like he knows his own name, that he’s never letting her go. Even if he has to burn the whole South Pole to keep her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I decided to update early as a treat for all the love I've gotten on this story. You guys are the best! Chapter 3 will still be up Monday. <3


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to take a second to thank everyone for all of your lovely feedback from chapter two! I'm floored by all your support. Please know that I read and cherish every single one of your comments! Thank you!!

Katara doesn’t answer him until the day before he’s set to leave. She finds him building a snowcastle with Izumi, who’s being adorably precocious, informing him that his Fire Nation-style roofline is “all wrong, Daddy! A castle is supposed to look like _this._ ” She points at her structure, which for all the world looks like a jagged mountain peak. He’s never felt so fond.

“Castles look different in other parts of the world, snowflake,” Katara says, kneeling down on the other side of their structures. “Zuko lives in a castle that looks just like that,”--and she points at his snowcastle, which isn’t really a true likeness, but he won’t correct her-- “do you think you’d like to see it?”

Izumi gapes at him. “You live in a castle, Daddy!?”

He nods, trying to keep his voice even as he pats her back. “I do. And you could too, if you wanted to come live with me. You and your mom.”

She whips around to face Katara. “Can we, Mommy?”

Katara catches his eye--she looks happy and miserable all at once, and his heart twists in answer--before she addresses her daughter. “If you want to, Izumi, then we can.”

“Yes!” She exclaims, and Zuko releases the breath he’d been holding, scooping his daughter into a hug and kissing her cheek. He releases her and she rushes to hug her mother too.

“Thank you, Katara,” he murmurs, meeting her eyes over Izumi’s shoulder. She gives him a tight smile in response, and averts her eyes.

***

They push off from the docks at first light, which, given the time of year, is almost noon. He watches from the deck as her father and brother see them off, eyeing him warily over Katara’s shoulder as they trade intense blue-eyed stares between themselves. Sokka gets in close and shakes Katara’s shoulders about something while Hakoda tosses Izumi up in the air, and he can hear her squeals of delight from the ship. He hopes for her sake that they’ll visit, but for his part he’s not looking forward to it; Hakoda had declined to return Zuko’s bow when he’d joined Katara to tell her family of their plan, and while he wasn’t going to get all huffy about it, he'd gotten the message loud and clear.

Katara looks drawn when she sweeps onto the deck, letting Izumi run to him and fling herself into his arms. 

“Didn’t manage to talk you out of it, then?” He jokes, bouncing his daughter higher in his arms so she can wave at the well-wishers below.

Katara sidles up beside him and sighs, leaning her arms on the railing. “They’re not happy, but everyone knows it’s the best thing for her.” She pauses for a moment. “It’s _me_ they don’t want to go.”

“What do they expect you to do, just send your child away?” Zuko says, heat creeping into his voice as he frowns. “I’d never ask you to do that. I couldn’t drag my child away from her mother.”

She meets his eyes then, a sad smile on her face. “I know you wouldn’t, Zuko,” she sighs again, and she looks so tired suddenly, and he finds himself wondering how much sleep she’d gotten the night before. “And I’m grateful for that, I really am. It’s just...it wasn’t an easy decision for me to make, you have to know that.”

“I do,” he says, swallowing. “But I’m really, really glad you did.”

He takes Izumi for a tour of the ship, making a point to show her all the places where the crew uses firebending as part of operations, and her little eyes go wide to see all the bending and the mechanisms that depend on them. Katara trails after them, more for Izumi than out of any interest of her own. At first he wonders why she insists on following--she’s obviously exhausted, and he’d assured her that he could watch Izumi for an hour if she wanted a nap--but then he turns a corner too quickly, and when Izumi looks up her mother is nowhere to be seen. He watches alarm dawn over her little face, a tremble in her lips as she searches the way they’d come, and when Katara reappears Izumi flies into her arms. The episode makes him a little sick with envy, but he reminds himself that he’d only turned up at the beginning of the week, and it was only natural she’d prefer her mother. 

***

Katara does end up taking a nap after the tour, Izumi joining her, so Zuko attends to the communications he’d allowed to pile up during his visit to the South Pole. As such he doesn’t see them again until dinner, which Izumi is largely hesitant to eat until Katara gives her a slice of mango, and then her tune changes completely.

They linger over tea at the end of the meal, Izumi entertaining herself a little ways away with a pair of stuffed animals she’d engaged in some lively debate.

“I’m going to pay for letting her nap with me this afternoon,” Katara says, equal parts rueful and fond, cradling her teacup close to her face. “She won’t get to sleep until late tonight, and she’ll be cranky in the morning.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve got it.”

He frowns, but it’s the kick in the pants he needs to get him to bring up the topic he’d been mulling over for hours. “So I think we should probably talk about...some things. If we’re going to do this, you know. Set some boundaries. That sort of stuff.”

“Good idea,” she nods. A beat of silence stretches between them as she rolls her teacup in her hands. “So did you want to start?”

“Uh,” he blinks. “I mean. We’ve got a lot to talk about. Logistics, titles, scheduling, discipline...” She raises an eyebrow as the list grows until he trails off.

“Before we get caught up in the details,” she says, an amused curl to her lips, “how about we start with what we want to get out of this arrangement?”

That gives him pause for a moment. “I want to be a father to my daughter.”

“And what does that mean for you?”

He blows out a breath. “I want to watch her grow up,” he says. “I want to love her and take care of her. I want to make her feel safe. I want to know who she is as a person, and teach her everything she needs to know to be Fire Lord after I’m done.” He glances up at Katara then, who’s eyeing him carefully. “What about you?”

She tips her chin up, thinking. “I want her to be loved, and happy. Safe. I want her to be surrounded by people who won’t ostracize her because of her bending, or the color of her eyes...” She avoids his eyes, busying herself with topping up their teacups. “That last part wasn’t going so well, back home, so I figured it was worth a shot.”

He gives her a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry about that.”

She shrugs, dismissive. “It’s not your fault.”

They’re silent for another minute, sipping their tea, Izumi’s animated chatter bubbling in the background.

“I know I said we wouldn’t have to see much of each other,” he starts, “but if we’re going to do this right, we _are_ going to have to talk to each other. At least where she’s concerned. I know we didn’t do such a great job at that last time, but--”

Her eyes flash. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Just that we were bad at talking, back in the day,” he stumbles, taken aback at her tone. “I didn’t think that would be such a controversial statement, honestly.”

“And you think it was _my_ fault we didn’t talk?!”

“ _And_ mine,” he growls back. “Spirits, Katara, I’m not trying to blame you for anything! I’m just saying. We’re going to have to make an effort.”

“Oh, so you think I won’t _make an effort_.”

He groans. “Stop trying to antagonize me!”

“Daddy?” Izumi calls, snapping them both out of their wind-up, and she’s watching them with trepidation. “Why do you sound mad?”

“It’s alright, cinderblossom, I’m okay,” he says, trying to give her a reassuring smile. When they’re satisfied she’s distracted herself again, they both sigh, drooping over the table.

“Alright, ground rule,” he says, voice low. “We don’t fight in front of her.”

“Yeah, okay,” Katara winces. “I’m sorry, Zuko, that was all me.”

“It’s fine. This is all...hard.”

“You can say that again.”

He frowns, and casts about for the right thing to say. “I really did mean it, though, when I said I wanted you to be happy. So I need you to promise you’ll talk to me about that too.”

She presses her lips together, crease forming in her brow. “And you promise to listen?”

He looks into her eyes and doesn’t hesitate when he answers, “I do.”

***

Uncle is predictably beside himself. Zuko had sent him a letter with the news as soon as Katara agreed to come, and so naturally he is chief among the welcoming party, even though he’s still in his traveling clothes. He claps a hand over his mouth as Izumi comes into view, his eyes sparkling with happy tears. Zuko feels a lump swell in his throat as he leads her over by the hand, and Uncle takes a knee to be closer to her eye level.

“This is your other Grandfather, my Uncle,” Zuko tells her, and she gives him a hesitant Fire Nation bow.

Iroh bows deeply in return before turning glittering eyes back on the girl, reaching out to give her hand a kiss. “It is an honor to meet you, Princess Izumi.”

She hides her smiling face in Zuko’s cloak at the title, peeking around the fabric at Uncle. “She’s still getting used to it,” he explains, settling a hand on her shoulder. Uncle nods, still beaming at her. 

“I brought something for you, Princess,” Iroh says, producing a parcel wrapped in red tissue paper from behind his back. This tempts her out from behind his leg, and she shuffles forward, tugging gently at the paper until she reveals the doll, her little golden eyes going wide.

“Look, Daddy! She looks like me!” Izumi points animatedly to her eyes, and he realizes with a pang of sadness that she’s probably never seen a doll with gold eyes, that the dolls in the South Pole would have looked nothing like her.

Before he can prompt her, she whirls back to Iroh and throws her arms around his neck. “Thank you Grandpa Uncle!”

Iroh grunts happily with the force of her impact, wrapping her in an easy hug and kissing the top of her head. “You’re so welcome, Princess! I’m glad you like it!”

More tears well in the corners of Uncle’s eyes as he holds her to his chest, and he remembers how wonderful Uncle’s hugs had been when he’d been small, and is glad his daughter will get more of them than he had.

He feels more than sees Katara draw up behind him, and Uncle gives her a happy smile from the ground before Izumi releases him to show her mother the doll.

“You must have ridden hard from Ba Sing Se to beat us here,” Zuko says, helping Uncle to his feet. The old man thumbs at his eyes, grinning.

“Spurred forth by the desire to see my new and only grandchild,” he says. “When you’re my age, nephew, you’ll understand.” He turns his attention to Katara, who’s hefted the princess onto her hip. “Master Katara, how lovely it is to see you again. I’m afraid you find me off my rhythm--usually I compliment a daughter’s beauty to indirectly compliment her mother, but in this particular case I don’t think that would quite land.”

Katara snickers. “Their resemblance is uncanny, isn’t it?”

“You have no idea. Somewhere I’ll find the royal portrait they had done when he was six--you’d hardly know it was a different child!”

He follows a few paces behind the three of them, heart straining with a sort of elated contentment he can’t recall having felt in years. For a second he feels like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, because he _can’t_ get to keep this, can he? But then he remembers that good things do happen to him, sometimes, when he fights to protect them, and as Izumi catches his eye over her mother’s shoulder and gives him a shy smile he realizes he’ll fight for this as hard as he needs to, as long as he needs to, just to see her smile again.

***

Izumi is given the chambers of the heir apparent, even though she won’t be officially legitimized and crowned right away. As much as he has the capability to wave his hand and make her his heir, her mixed heritage makes her situation a little more delicate. It was lucky that she had the look of a firebender, but there were conservative factions in the country who would need to be won over if either of them were going to have a peaceful reign, and that would take work. 

Katara is given a room adjoining her daughter’s by her express request, despite that the only rooms adjoining Izumi’s are meant for servants, and accordingly sized. Officially, she is the Fire Lord’s mistress--as mother to his child she can be little else--and though she rankles at the title, it affords her a good deal of freedom. She has an allowance, which Zuko has ensured is beyond generous, as well as limitless access to the amenities of the palace--cooks, tailors, staff, etc. The room has been hastily redecorated for her in water tribe blues, and while his staff have done their best to make it elegant and inviting, Zuko still frowns at the cramp of it.

“Please, Zuko, it’s more than enough,” she whispers in response to his frown. “I’ve been sleeping on the floor in a single room with Sokka and Dad for years. This is luxury for me.”

“You’re the mother of the Princess, Katara,” he whispers back. “That’s a position that demands some respect. You’re sure you don’t want the lakehouse?” There had been some discussion during their journey of her taking up her own private residence entirely, but she’d shunned the idea. She shakes her head again.

“It’ll be easier for us if we’re all in the same place while she’s young. When she’s older we can revisit it.”

“If you’re sure.”

She glances at him, holds his gaze for a breath. “I am.”

She wanders over to inspect her furniture, smoothing her hand over the duvet and adjusting the placement of her desk chair. It’s a strangely intimate moment, and Zuko feels a surge of guilty desire wash over him. He knows he should fight it--she’s not here for him, and he’d do well to remember that, but six years apart have only made her more lovely, and seeing her with Izumi is so arresting he can hardly breathe.

“...you’re _sure_ you won’t take a larger bedroom?”

“Zuko, for goodness’ sake, this is _fine_.”

“But you’d tell me if it weren’t?”

She rounds on him, exasperated. “I promised I would, didn’t I?”

“You did,” he concedes, and then sighs, wilting.

“And you promised to listen,” she says, perfunctory, folding her arms and dropping herself onto the edge of her bed. “So what’s really bugging you?”

“I just want to be doing more for you, Katara,” he says, raking a hand through his hair. He pulls out the chair at her desk and plunks himself down, head in his hands. “You’ve given up so much for me, for her, for this, and stuff like this,” he gestures at the miserable little room, “is all I have to give back. And it will never be enough.”

“You’re sweet, Zuko,” she gives him a tight smile. “Really. But I think you know I don’t really care about stuff like this.” She also waves at the room, mirroring his gesture.

He looks up at her, still bent over his hands. “Then how am I ever supposed to repay you?”

She furrows her brow. “This isn’t a transaction, Zuko.”

“I know it’s not,” he bites back sourly, rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand. “That’s not what I mean. I just...I messed everything up for you. You had a path set out for yourself, you know? But if it wasn’t for me, you’d be on that path. And I don’t know how to make that up to you.”

“Listen to me,” she bids, and he snaps his head up to look at her. “You’re right, I wouldn’t be here, but it doesn’t do us any good to think about what ‘would be’ if it wasn’t for her. Because she’s _here_ , and that changes everything for me.” She looks out the window, biting her lips, before straightening her posture and turning back to him. “I’m here because it’s going to be the best thing for her, and because...well, you and I both know what it’s like to lose a parent who loved us. I don’t want to deprive her of one just because of a bad breakup.”

He winces. “You still shouldn’t have to martyr yourself for her, though. Things may have ended badly for us, but it still matters to me that you’re not _miserable_. So if there’s anything I can do--if you think of anything--I want you to tell me.”

She looks like she’s considering saying something, brow creased and head cocked, so he prompts her with a look.

“...Do you think I could work outside the palace as a healer?” 

The heavy tension in the room snaps, and he lets out a peal of raspy laughter.

She frowns. “I know it would go against tradition for a _royal mistress_ to have a day job, but--”

“ _Of course_ you can, Katara,” he beams.

She snaps her mouth shut, pouting for a moment. “But won’t that cause problems for you?”

“You’ll be healing the sick,” he shrugs, smirking. “If anything, you’re solving problems.”

“I meant _politically_ , Zuko.”

“I’m going to be trying to legitimize a half water tribe bastard and make her my heir,” he says, standing up from the chair and smoothing out his robes. “Best case, you’ll go unnoticed, and worst case you’ll just be a distraction from the legitimization fight. Either way, you’re not hurting anything.”

She considers this for a moment, tucking her hands under her thighs on the bed. “Yeah, okay.”

“But even if you were,” he starts, hesitant, letting the moment get heavy again. “Even if it did cause problems--there’s nothing _you_ could do, Katara, nothing _you_ could want, that I wouldn’t try to give you. You’re just such a _good_ person, and if giving you something you want makes my life hard, then...whatever,” he finishes weakly, pacing backwards towards the door. “You’d probably be setting me straight in any case.”

“You really believe that about me?” She asks, lifting her eyes to meet his, setting off sparks in his gut. “Still? After everything?”

His voice cracks when he answers from the doorway, “of course I do.” 

***

Ultimately Zuko needn’t have worried about their sleeping arrangements, because less than a week after they arrive back in Caldera there’s a knock at his door in the middle of the night. He sits bolt upright, rather accustomed to being woken at all hours with one crisis or another, but this is a new sort of emergency.

The door creaks open and Katara pokes her head in, holding Izumi by the hand.

“I’m so sorry to wake you,” she says, “but she insisted we at least ask.”

“Ask me what?” Zuko says sleepily, rubbing his eyes. Izumi is already bounding across the room, stretching up on her tiptoes to perch her chin on the edge of his bed.

“Can I sleep with you tonight Daddy?”

His eyes flick to Katara, who’s still frowning at him apologetically.

“You can say no,” she assures him. “It’s just--in the South Pole, children sleep in their parent’s sleepsacks until they’re old enough to keep themselves warm, and she’s--”

“Of course you can, cinderblossom,” he murmurs, happy lump in his throat. “You need help up?”

She nods, so he scoops her into bed and she settles in tight beside him, warm in the cool silk sheets. Katara leans over to kiss her forehead, looking drawn.

“I’ll see you in the morning, snowflake.”

“Mommy don’t leave!”

“I told you, sweetheart,” she says, her voice low, crouching down to meet her daughter eye-to-eye. “Daddy and I don’t sleep in the same bed. You have to pick, and tonight you picked Daddy.”

“But _Mom_!” Izumi sounds frighteningly close to crying, and Katara sighs.

“It’s fine, Katara,” he grits out, hoping his voice doesn’t betray the thudding in his chest. Her eyes flash to his. “Really, there’s plenty of room.”

“We can’t let her push us around, Zuko,” she says, stroking Izumi’s hair.

“It’s only for one night,” he says, choking on his own hope. Her eyes flick between the two of them.

“It won’t be,” she mutters, but levers herself up onto the bed anyway.

True to her prediction, Izumi drags her mother into his bedroom every night after that, and even though Katara makes an attempt to leave them, every night they reel her back. Zuko can’t quite tell if she actually doesn’t want to stay, or if she just feels like she shouldn’t impose, but he can’t pretend there isn’t part of him that’s delighted by it, sleeping together as a family.

A week later, Izumi squirms happily between them, rolling to face Zuko before dropping into sleep. He watches her for a little while, enchanted, as he has been every night, when her mother rolls over to face him.

“I told you it’d be more than one night,” she says, giving him a timid smile.

Warmth blooms in his chest, and the corners of his lips twitch. “I don’t mind.”

“I am sorry, though,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean to put you out.”

“Really, Katara, I’m fine. This is...this is precious to me.”

“If you ever need the night to yourself, you know, just let me know,” she says, shifting uncomfortably. “I’ll figure out something to tell her.”

He furrows his brow at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” and she sighs. “If you ever have _company_ , Zuko.”

“Oh.” He lets that sit, avoiding her eyes for a second. “Um. I. I won’t.”

“You don’t have to promise me that.”

“I’m not. I just. I don’t do that.”

She snorts. “Right.”

“You think I’m _lying_?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes flash with challenge, and that riles him; he feels his heart pound with mounting ire, and he props himself up on his elbow to loom a little bit.

“Well I’m _not_ ,” he hisses, venomous, trying to keep quiet. “But even if, even if I had _company_ , my family comes first.”

“I’m not your family,” she snarls.

He grits his teeth through the sting of her remark. “You’re _her_ family.”

Izumi squirms, reaching out to wrap her arms around Zuko’s forearm. They both watch her in tense silence until they’re sure she hasn’t woken, his jaw clenching the entire time.

“I think she’s asleep,” he rasps into the heavy silence. “If you don’t want to stay, don’t let me keep you.” He tries to come off indifferent, but he can hear a bitter edge to his voice.

“It’s not you who’s keeping me,” she sighs, snuffing out his anger like a candle in the wind. “I shouldn’t be taking out my frustration on you, Zuko. I’m sorry. It just feels...weird, being so intimate again like this.” She worries her bottom lip with her teeth, and strokes Izumi’s hair again. “I was angry for a long time too.”

“I’d imagine so,” he says, blowing out a breath. “I deserved it.”

She chuckles, low and soft and warm. “Some of it, sure. But not all of it.”

He listens to the sounds of their breathing and stares at the canopy of the bed, conscience twisting in his chest. “Someday I’m going to stop screwing things up for you, Katara,” he says. “I know I don’t have much to show for it, but I promise I’m trying.”

She gives him a sad smile, carding her fingers through their daughter’s black hair. “This wasn’t a screw-up, Zuko,” she says softly. “It may not have been easy, but at the end of the day, she’s been worth every second of it.”

They fall into silence after that, and he finds his chest feels looser than it’s felt in months, since before he got the invitation to the festival, since before he knew she wanted to see him again. It hadn’t turned out anything like he’d pictured, this new future with Katara back in it, and it hasn’t been easy either, but as his eyes rest on his daughter’s sleeping face, he knows he wouldn’t trade it for anything.


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, the response to this story is blowing me away. Thank you to each and every one of you who's reading along and leaving me lovely comments! I'm so glad I stumbled into this fandom and this community.
> 
> Heaps of praise as ever to DisConsolate, who stayed up late to read a last-minute addition to this chapter that I decided was sorely needed. Dis, where would I be without you?

They fall into routine as six exquisite weeks skip by. Izumi wakes with him at first light, and they play the “quiet game” while he sneaks her out from around her mother, leaving Katara to doze in the pale morning sunlight. For the first few weeks he could hardly look at her just as one can hardly look at the sun, but it’s easier now, closeness and familiarity bringing the dead heat of his longing down to a simmer. 

He leads Izumi through a morning meditation and a few fireless katas before breakfast, where Uncle often joins them, having sold the tea shop in order to spend more time with the princess. Just as Zuko had suspected, Uncle dotes on her; he is her constant companion when she is not in her lessons, taking her for walks in the gardens or attending tea parties with her growing company of stuffed animals for guests. Izumi is equally enamored with him and will have him tell her the same stories about legendary firebenders over and over and over again, which she will sometimes “read” to a captive audience by reciting what she can remember over an unfurled scroll. Zuko finds this habit particularly charming, especially when she “reads” to her mother, who listens with endless patience and grace, even as Izumi skips to her favorite parts of the stories and leaves out some of the important context.

Katara will sometimes make an appearance at breakfast for a moment or two on her way to the clinic where she volunteers. It took all of a single afternoon to convince the chief healer of the Caldera Abbey Hospital to allow her to see patients, in which Katara had healed three fevers, two displaced fractures, five lacerations of varying severity and one very bad concussion. She’d stopped by his office upon her return to the palace with the glow of exertion on her features, hair slightly ruffled and a bloodstain on her tunic, looking more like herself than he could recall having seen in a long time. 

After breakfast Izumi goes to her lessons--calligraphy, geography, history, and then firebending in the afternoon. She is, of course, a bending prodigy; at first it had made him think of Azula, to watch his daughter roll through forms he had taken much longer to master, and the comparison chilled him. He knew as well as anyone that his kin had a cruel streak a mile wide, and while he hoped it was something learned rather than inherited, watching a familiar cool focus slip over Izumi’s features when at her bending had given him pause. But then he’d gotten to know her a little better, learned to see the way she wielded her element like a limb instead of a tool—instead of a weapon—and realized it was  _ Katara’s _ talent she’d inherited, not Azula’s.

He reports as much to her mother one night in the cover of darkness, their daughter a warm barrier between them.

“She’s just like you, you know,” he confesses in a whisper, stroking Izumi’s hair away from her temples. Katara hums across the bed, looking over from the scroll she’d been reading, digging her fingers into her neck. “I know she looks like me, but on the inside she’s all you. Talent, kindness, control.”

She hums again, a fond smile spreading over her face. “Dad used to say the same thing. Especially when she was throwing a tantrum about something. She’d be screaming her head off the way she does—I don’t think she’s done that to you yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time—and while I’d be comforting her, he’d look me in the eyes and say  _ now you know how it feels, _ ” she pitches her voice low, a mockery of her father, and then laughs at her own joke. “He got a big kick out of it.”

Zuko chuckles. “Not very kind of him to delight at your misfortune.”

“Oh, he made it very clear that he thinks I deserved it. I was apparently a constant terror from ages two to four.”

That sobers him a little. “And was she?”

She sighs, pouting in consideration. “Those were difficult years for us. She could be pretty fussy sometimes, but other times she would get all wide-eyed and silent. That was what was really hard for me, I think, was to see her scared like that. Like she could tell how scared  _ I  _ was.”

He can’t stop himself--he reaches over their daughter, who’s always been a barrier, keeping them distant--and takes her hand, stroking the pad of his thumb over her knuckles. She gives him a weak smile. 

“I just…I didn’t know what was going to happen with us. How my tribe would react to her firebending, or if she’d ever make a friend. Sokka was as good to us as he could be, but he couldn’t be everybody at once.”

“I’m so sorry. I wish...Spirits, Katara, I wish I could have done something.”

“It’s not your fault,” she murmurs, going silent for a long moment before she speaks again. “I think I owe you an apology, Zuko,” she says softly, knuckles going white as she makes a fist in the sheets. “When Hawkey came back without a reply from my letter...it wasn’t like you, to not respond to news like that. Even if you  _ hadn’t _ wanted anything to do with us, you would have at least dignified it with a response. I should have known something was amiss. I should have had more faith in you.”

“I don’t blame you, Katara,” he says, reaching out to touch her before stopping himself. “I didn’t give you much reason to have faith in me, back then. I was possessive, and touchy, and controlling. Even if we had managed to get everything figured out, I can’t promise my initial reaction would have been...kind.”

She gives him a tight smile that’s almost a grimace. “Even still. I feel like I wronged you. And to see you with her now, I...I just feel I’ve done both of you a great disservice.”

There’s a tremble in her voice that makes him think she’s going to cry, so he carefully lifts a palm to rest feather-light on her shoulder. “We’re here now,” he murmurs, trying to soothe. “That’s all that matters.”

She hangs her head, clenching her jaw. “How can you forgive me so easily?”

His lip curls in a half-smile. “It’s what we do, you and I. We forgive each other.”

She huffs a mirthless laugh, blinking back tears, and wipes her nose on her hand. “I guess it is kind of our thing, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so a silence falls between them, heavy like a monsoon rain. She picks at a thread in the coverlet, and he watches her, taking note of a fine scar on her hand he’d never seen before.

“In hindsight, I suppose I’m surprised your brother never sailed up here to murder me. Or at least shout me within an inch of my life.”

“Only because I begged him not to,” she huffs, folding her arms across her chest. “I mean, I was hurt and angry, but...I didn’t want anybody to break ties with you over this. I think we all thought you knew, and had your reasons for your decisions.”

“That’s...exceptionally kind of you,” he says, wondrous, and then realizes, “that must have hurt even worse.”

She flicks her eyes up to his, not quite managing a smile. “Only a little.”

Silence falls as he tears his eyes away from hers, the hurt reflected there unbearable, and directs his gaze to his daughter’s sleeping face. He strokes her silky hair, marvels at her tiny nostrils and the perfect shell of her ear.

“Not that it makes it any better,” he starts, still not looking at her, and clears his throat. “But I  _ did _ try to write to you, for a while. I never got very far--I was too much of a coward I guess--but I always wanted to ask why you left.”

She nods, as though she’d been expecting the question, and picks at the thread on the coverlet again. “I had a number of reasons--you know, petty things,” she sighs. “But ultimately, I think because neither of us were happy, and I didn’t see any way we were going to be.”

He nods, unable to speak for the lump rising in his throat. His vision starts to blur. Was closure supposed to hurt? He’d have to ask Uncle.

“Zuko?”

“Huh?”

“I asked if you were okay,” she says, reaching over Izumi to put her hand on his scarred cheek. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s, um,” he swallows. “It’s fine. I just...you’re right. I just wish I’d been better to you.”

He reaches up to remove her hand, but when she doesn’t move, he ends up stroking a thumb across her knuckles instead. He loses himself in the concerned pinch of her brow and twist of her mouth, and if he leans into her touch, it is because he cannot help but to do so.

***

When he’s able to sneak away from his work, he likes to take over Izumi’s firebending instruction, even if only for twenty minutes or so. She’s an eager pupil, and even after six weeks of lessons she still delights in bending out in the open like it’s new.

She likes to arrange her stuffed animals to watch, and today is no different: a selection of her favorite toys occupies the low, flat rocks along the far edge of the training ground, with the doll that Uncle gave her (amusingly named Hakkana, a name so water tribe it hurts) given pride of place beside the jug of watered-down juice for mid-lesson refreshment. It always makes him smile, to see her toys so arranged; it’s exactly the sort of thing Ozai never would have allowed, nor Azulon before him he suspects, so Zuko makes a point encouraging the behavior in a private rebellion. He bows to each of the toys in turn before shaking himself limber—it’s been a long day of meetings, and he’s looking forward to the exercise.

“Alright cinderblossom, show me what Master Yi had you working on.”

Izumi screws up her face and strikes a basic stance, and Zuko shifts to mirror her movements. He walks her through the forms slowly, one movement at a time—kick, pivot, kick, pivot—making sure to praise her liberally and make gentle corrections when needed.

“Good. Keep your elbow stuck to your side like glue— _ just _ like that. Do you feel how your chi moves differently in your body? Try again.  _ Good! _ ”

He loves to watch the satisfied smile spread over her face when she gets the movement just right and the flame doubles in power, leaping easily from her foot in a way it never had for him at her age. 

It’s late in the afternoon of an exceptionally hot day, and he can tell she’s running out of stamina from the way her kicks are listless and her punches flagging, so he decides to wrap up a little early, and maybe take her for a dip in the duck pond to cool down afterwards.

“You’re doing great, Izumi. Let me tell you what: if you give me one more  _ really _ good set of eagle kicks, we’ll break early. Can you do that for me?”

She nods vigorously, dropping into a hasty stance before firing off a limp kick. 

“Elbow down...good!  _ Good _ , Izumi, that’s right, keep your foot turned-- _ wait! _ ” 

But it’s too late when he catches what’s about to happen. Izumi, stance properly corrected, lets out a fierce jet of flame that licks out all the way to the edge of the training ground, catching her beloved Hakkana by the hair.

Izumi howls in anguish when she sees what she’s done, rushing to the doll, Zuko hot on her heels to keep her from burning herself on the smoldering toy. He had bent the flames out as quick as he could, but the right side of the doll’s face is charred and her hair is noticeably burnt. She snatches it out of his hands, petting at the ruined face and crushing the doll to her chest, screaming and wracked with hiccuping sobs. Zuko blinks at her for a second, stunned by the violence of the outburst, and crouches down, arms open for a hug. 

“Dad _ dy _ ,” Izumi wails, drawing out the word with another buckling sob as she crashes her face into his shoulder, and he has to rock back on his heels to stay upright.

“It’s ok, sweetheart, I know you’re upset,” he says gently in between shushing her, trying to stroke circles on her back like he’s seen Katara do, but it’s no use; Izumi pitches backward, another ragged scream tearing from her lungs. 

Her face is alarmingly red, shiny with tears and spittle and snot, and her breaths shudder as she winds up for the next wail, and the next, and the next. She seems to be ramping up her tantrum, and a panic unspools in his chest as he realizes he doesn’t know what to do.

Well, he does know  _ one  _ thing he can do.

“Come on, let’s find your Mom, I’m sure she can make Hakkana feel better,” he says, trying to keep his voice even as he hefts her up into his arms, trying to anchor her against his side like he’s seen Katara do so many times. Not for the first time, he marvels at how  _ easy _ it all seems to come to her, feeling more than a little guilt at his own awkwardness with the child.

Katara is in her chambers, freshly bathed and dressed in a light cotton robe, her long hair dripping onto the small of her back. Hearing Izumi’s telltale sobs, she meets them in the hallway, concern writ in the pinch of her brow as he hurries towards her.

“Is she okay?!” She asks, already inspecting Izumi for obvious harm as he sets the child on her feet.

“Fine, but she burnt her doll, and then she started crying and I didn’t know what else to do,” he admits in a rush, raking a hand through his hair.

Something shifts in Katara’s face at that, and then she seems to relax, shifting her focus to the child. “Oh, sweetheart. Hey, look at me,” she says as she crouches down, taking their daughter’s face in her hands and thumbing away her tears. “Do you want a mango? Let’s get you a snack.”

He follows after them in a daze as Katara leads the child to the kitchens. The matronly cook also seems privy to Katara’s scheme, and has the fruit peeled and sliced before they even get the chance to ask.

Izumi cools down a little with the fruit in her mouth, and by the time she’s finished her whole portion her cries have settled into sniffles and whimpers.

“Is that really the secret?” he stage-whispers to her after a moment.

Katara shoots him a little smile over her shoulder. “At least half the time. Either that, or a nap.”

“I wish that would work on my ministers.”

She smirks. “Give it a try. You might be surprised.”

He snickers, watching as she turns back to Izumi and strokes her hair away from her face.

“You feeling a little better, snowflake?”

“Mommy I  _ hurt  _ Hakkana!”

“I see, sweetheart. That’s why we have to be more careful with our bending.”

“But I  _ burned _ her!”

And Zuko’s not sure what it is--something in the tone of her voice, maybe, or in the way her little eyebrows crease, but there’s a click of recognition somewhere in his hindbrain, and confidence settles over his bare shoulders like a mantel.

He sets his hand on her mother’s shoulder, and she turns, giving him a quizzical look. “Let me take this one, Katara.”

She raises an eyebrow, but steps back to let him sit on the floor before Izumi, who sits upon an upturned fruit crate with the doll hugged tight to her chest.

He curls a lock of fine hair behind her ear. “You feeling any better, cinderblossom?” She shakes her head, not looking at him. “What’re you thinking about?”

“Don’t wanna be a firebender anymore,” she admits, trying to hide her face in her shoulder.

He gives her a wan smile, remembering the day the very thought had crossed his mind, when he was maybe a little older than her. He tries to draw on the confident wisdom his mother had exuded when she’d given him this same speech. He thinks every firebender also in possession of a conscience must get it.

“And why’s that, sweetheart?”

“Fire burns things,” she says, glum.

He nods, speaking gently. “You’re right. It does. That’s why firebenders take lessons, so we can learn to control our fire, and so we don’t burn things we don’t mean to.”

“But if fire burns things, then it’s bad. I shouldn’t firebend if it’s bad.”

He takes a deep breath. “You’re right that it’s bad to hurt things, but you don’t have to hurt things to be a firebender. Sometimes it’s good to burn things. Some things are supposed to burn.”

That gets her attention, and she gives him a wary glare, looking so like Katara that his breath hitches. “What’s  _ supposed _ to burn?”

“Candles,” he says simply. “And campfires. You had a fire in your hearth back in the south pole—can you imagine how cold you would have been without it?”

She frowns, considering this, and he pushes on. “And also—do you remember on the ship we took to get here, how I showed you all the firebending engineers? Their firebending made the ship go. They weren’t hurting anything. It’s only  _ because _ they were firebending that we were able to take the ship home.”

“...So it’s not bad to firebend?”

He holds his arms open for a hug, and she burrows into his chest. “No, cinderblossom, it isn’t bad. It’s a responsibility, just like any power. But it’s not bad.” He kisses the top of her head as she settles into his lap. “It’s okay to feel bad about the accident and wish that it hadn’t happened, but I don’t want you to think that you’re bad, or that fire is bad, because it happened. Okay?”

She sniffs, nodding, and goes still in his arms, still clutching the doll to her chest, but soothed for the time being. The matronly chef calls Izumi over to select a fruit tart and she bounds over, melancholy sloughing off her as she runs. Katara checks her hip into his shoulder, giving him an approving nod.

“Nice job.”

“Thanks,” he smirks back. “But I think every firebender gets that speech around her age. Standard practice Fire Nation parenting.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Zuko. You did great.”

The compliment rings in his ears, but he can only give her a tight smile in response.

***

They’re both remiss to let Izumi leave their sight that evening, so Zuko joins the girls for dinner--a rare treat, as he usually tries to let Katara have the evenings with their daughter. He figures it’s only fair; he gets the mornings, after all, and there’s usually work to get done during dinner, especially if he’s going to be getting into bed early enough to make Izumi’s bedtime. Besides, it’s not like they’re  _ really _ a family, even if she’d mostly stopped antagonizing him, and he’d mostly stopped walking on eggshells around her.

Izumi is too wound up to get to sleep on time, so he puts aside his work in order to read from her favorite fairytale scrolls. Katara listens from the other side of the bed with a warm smile on her lips, her hands occupied with needle and thread in an attempt to patch up the mangled doll. He’s no Uncle, but he does his best with the voices, and after a couple of times through the scroll she’s dozing with her head pillowed on his stomach, his fingers idly carding through her hair.

“It’s nice to finally hear the whole story,” Katara murmurs, once they’re sure Izumi’s all the way asleep. “When she reads it to me, she just sticks to the part where the dragon’s scales come off in the water.”

He chuffs a fond laugh. “Yeah, I’ve overheard you two. She seems to really like that part.”

She hums, tying off the thread and breaking it with her teeth before surveying her work. “She can be like a polar-bear dog with a bone, about some things.”

“I wonder who she gets  _ that _ from.”

She gapes at him in mock-affront, eyes sparkling with laughter, and swats him on the shoulder. “That’s rich coming from you, Mr.  _ I-must-capture-the-Avatar!” _

He snorts, which tips them both into stifled peals of laughter, trying not to wake the child. When they come down, he hums fondly. “The ministers won’t know what hit them, when she ascends. What she can’t charm out of the nation, she’ll annoy out of it.”

Katara’s face slips into seriousness. “You really think she’ll make a good leader?”

He pauses, wanting to give her an honest answer. “If she’s anything like you, yes. Of course I do.”

He isn’t prepared for the look on Katara’s face after he says this, and he isn’t entirely sure what it means--the little pinch in her brow, the parted lips, the wide eyes--and before he can figure it out it’s gone, and he’s left with a clenching in his chest that makes his cheeks warm.

“Well, let’s hope she gets a nice long time to learn from your example, in any case.”

They’re silent for a minute, neither of them returning to their books or their mending, and he notices that they’ve each laid a hand on their daughter, their fingers inches away from each other. He wonders what would happen if he reached out, just laid his fingertips over hers. It’d be a risk, but maybe one he’s--

“I think we made a good team today,” she says, patting the back of his hand a couple of times before giving it a little squeeze. He flicks his eyes up to her face, trying to contain the effect she has on him, and her face is warm and soft. “I’m glad to be doing this with you, Zuko.”

Slowly, he twists his hand around in hers so that they’re palm to palm, and returns her squeeze. When she doesn’t pull away, he finds the courage to speak.

“Me too,” he rasps, giving her a half smile and squeezing again.

And even though he’s dying to, he doesn’t lace their fingers together, just watches as her cheeks color to match his, before she slowly withdraws her hand, lashes fanning over her cheeks as she averts her eyes.

“It’s getting late,” she murmurs, sliding down in the covers and shifting around to get comfortable. 

He watches her for a few moments longer than necessary before shifting Izumi off his body and bending the sconces out, settling himself in his customary sleeping position on his side, facing his daughter, one arm wedged under the pillows along the headboard.

It’s a little harder to fall asleep than usual after this exchange; the energy in the room feels charged, and his chest feels crowded by all the things he feels but doesn’t dare to say. He’s exhausted from the events of the rest of the day, though, so he lets the rhythm of their breathing tug him down.

Something wakes him briefly in the night, and when he opens his eyes a crack to make sure nothing is amiss he sees Katara has turned in the night to face him, her own arm wedged under her pillow. He realizes he can feel her knuckles against his palm, that her hand is curled inside his, and figures it must be real because his dreams are rarely this kind.

He gives her hand one more squeeze before he falls back asleep.


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's been reading along and commenting! It's truly a joy to share this story with you!
> 
> Praise as ever to DisConsulate, who lights my way as a beacon in the storm of my waffling.

Given her mixed heritage, the Fire Sages insist on examining her bending skills before bringing Izumi into the line of succession. After some back-and-forth about the best course of action for this, Zuko allows a delegation of high-ranking sages to observe her afternoon bending lessons until such time as they are satisfied with her skill and prowess as to consent to coronate her.

Katara is nervous to open Izumi up to scrutiny so soon after her dramatic accident, but Zuko knows without the support of the Fire Sages, finding a foothold among the more conservative factions of the nobility would be nearly impossible, stunting the potential of both his reign and his daughter’s. Privately he’s surprised (and more than a little relieved) that the Fire Sages were willing to work with him in the first place—if his father hadn’t done such a valiant job of alienating them during his own reign, Zuko might not have had it so easy.  _ Thank Agni for small mercies _ .

To his further astonishment, the Grand Sage writes an official missive with his consent less than a month after the audiences begin, which Zuko finds at the bottom of a tedious pile of correspondence that had kept him from dinner with the girls. He lopes through the corridors to the dining room Katara prefers, giving her a start when he throws open the door, letter in hand.

“It’s good news, I promise,” he huffs, dropping onto the cushion beside her and handing her the letter. “Where’s Izumi?”

“With Iroh. She already ate--I got back from the clinic kind of late tonight,” she says regretfully, letting him catch his breath as she squints at the formal script, rubbing at the sore spot on her neck. “Is this from the Fire Sage?”

“Uh-huh,” he pants, helping himself to a cup of cold tea.

“...so soon?” She says, her face splitting into a radiant grin.

“I know it’s fast, but I thought you’d want to know as soon as I knew,” he says, also grinning, and she throws her arms around his shoulders with a squeal. His heart leaps into his throat at the contact, and he brings his arms around her ribs—it’s the first time she’d touched him like this since she’s been back in the capital, and it takes a conscious effort to release her when she starts to pull away too soon.

“Come on,” she says, getting her legs under her and grabbing for his hand. “We’ve got to tell her and Iroh. He’s going to be over the moon!”

And so he allows himself to be dragged through the halls of his own palace, her fingers laced in his, and he wonders if she even realizes that she’s doing it, or what it’s doing to him.

He’s noticed a steady thaw in her demeanor towards him since the burning incident: she’d started turning up at breakfast more often, kept inviting him to dinners, and made a habit of engaging him in idle conversation after they put the child to sleep. She’d become more liberal with touch as well, often reaching over Izumi’s sleeping form to stroke his arm or squeeze his hand, or stopping him in the corridor to fix his hair or straighten his collar when he’s on his way to a meeting—that sort of thing. 

It’s been driving him halfway out of his mind.

He reminds himself that Katara had always touched her friends in this same manner, and that all these behaviors point to him finally finding himself back in her good graces, but he can’t shake the feeling that something is  _ different  _ about it now. He is not keen to investigate this feeling though--the delicate balance they’d struck is too precious to him, and he worries one misjudgement, one overstep will catapult him back into the icy waters of her distrust.

But as she hauls Izumi up onto her hip and ushers him into a celebratory  _ family  _ hug, he finds himself wondering if he’s being overcautious.

***

Seeing as he has yet to introduce his daughter at court, Zuko has his household plan a formal coronation and debut ball to be held as early as possible, as much to introduce the princess to the nation as the nation to the princess.

Not for the first time, he’s grateful she looks the part. The Fire Nation sun has made her skin a warmer, more burnished shade than his own, but it’s not an uncommon complexion in the northern regions of the archipelago, and in any case her eyes are radiant gold, just like his. The royal tailor assembles a formal regalia for her as a miniature of his own, replete with shoulder spikes and tiny crown, and she looks every bit the princess.

The only concession they make to her mother’s heritage is in her hair, combining the traditional topknot-and-crown with her mother’s customary loops, gold cuff beads at her temples. It’s a charming arrangement, he thinks--and Katara must agree, because she styles her hair the same way, most days.

“You’re sure I won’t be a mark against you both by being there?” Katara asks, hesitantly raising her arms for the royal tailors. She’s dressing in blue--no sense in hiding who she is, after all--but the tailor has a number of daring styles he’s dying to try, each of which seems to scandalize her more than the last.

“Completely sure,” he says, bouncing Izumi on his knee, both of their fittings already complete. The tailor cinches his tape measure around Katara’s waist, yanking it tight, and she yelps. “It’d be more of a scandal if you were missing from the event.”

“It’s been a while since I was welcome in polite society,” she mutters, trying to hold still as the tailor pins her bodice in place. She pulls a face. “It’s going to take some adjustment.” 

Despite her protests, he thinks she looks positively regal--her chin tipped up and her shoulders back as the tailors drape her in silks, azure and cobalt and ultramarine. But even as they do, each new layer of blue bringing out her eyes and the cool, dusky tones of her skin, he can’t help but imagine how she would look (stunning, breathtaking, fever-inducing) in red.

***

The evening of her coronation comes on the first clear day after a week of autumn storms. The courtyard is swathed in red silks and towering bouquets of Fire Lilies, and the festive spirit almost manages to make its way past the pounding anxiety in his heart. They crown her at sunset, the last orange rays of Agni’s light glinting off the delicate ornament the Grand Sage pins into her topknot, and when she rises from her knees he pronounces her Princess Izumi of the Fire Nation, and the words ring in Zuko’s ears.

Katara sits beside him in the front row during the ceremony, pressing close against his side. Her hand finds its way into his, and she holds onto him as if for dear life throughout the entire thing, knuckles gone white. It feels tender and intimate, and so he grips her back, flashing her a quick smile when she glances over at him, her lashes gone wet.

Katara herself is a vision, having been bullied by the royal tailor into wearing a robe that clings to her lush figure, her waist belted tight and her collar dipping low in the back. She wears her hair mostly loose like her daughter, her topknot bound with a little silver circlet imprinted with the phases of the moon that he’d gifted her for the occasion. Zuko finds himself excessively pleased to see her wearing it.

The rest of the evening is decidedly less pleasant. Even though there’s music and dancing and the finest food and drink the country can offer, Zuko is trapped with his daughter on the royal dais, greeting the endless line of well-wishers, accepting their congratulations and gifts. Izumi conducts herself like royalty for the most part, bowing in return when people bow to her and keeping her general squirming to a minimum.

“Is Mommy going to come sit with us?” she asks, about half an hour into the reception. He feels his heart fall at the hope on her face.

“Not tonight, cinderblossom,” he says gently, squeezing her hand. “But you and I will see her later, okay?”

He takes the opportunity to glance up and scan the crowd for Katara—she stands out easily in the blue, but it still takes him a minute to find her, lurking in an alcove, keeping her head down and taking slow sips off her wine. It doesn’t seem like she’s having a very good time, which discourages him to notice. She hasn’t shown much interest in integrating herself into Fire Nation high society, which he can’t fault her for, but it stands to make evenings like this lonelier for her.

He does wish she could have joined them on the dais, but that would have been a statement he wasn’t sure any of them could afford to make. Mistresses weren’t official members of the royal family, though their children could be, in special cases such as this. Besides, the whole point of the evening was to show off what a superlative  _ Fire Nation _ princess Izumi could be, and while they made no effort to hide her mixed parentage, it would only cause trouble to throw it in everyone’s faces.

He looks up a few minutes later, relieved to find Katara immersed in conversation with a pair of unmarried siblings from the middling nobility. A few more minutes pass before his eyes catch on a swish of blue on the dance floor, and he spots that the brother has whisked her out into a lively dance number. Zuko knows he ought not to stare, but he can’t help himself; the young man’s hold is close and familiar, and Katara looks flushed and radiant.

There’s a pang of envy in his chest—he longs to be the man sweeping her around in circles, his hand on her lower back and his breath in her ear—but at the same time he feels content just seeing her happy. He breathes into the feeling, letting it center him, before returning his attention to his daughter and the well-wishers.

Whenever his eyes find Katara for the rest of the evening she seems to be enjoying herself; the young man from before is her constant companion, but he catches her in conversation with clusters of other young nobility, or participating in some of the more fast-paced and social dances with a smile on her face.

“I want to dance, Daddy!” Izumi declares, turning to him after they’ve finished greeting their last guest. It’s past her bedtime, but Katara had managed to cajole her into taking a nap this afternoon, so he thinks he’ll be able to get away with keeping her up for a little while longer.

He gives her a crooked smile. “Alright, cinderblossom, we can dance.”

They process down from the dais, the reveling crowd parting for them as they make their way to the dance floor. Zuko sweeps into a dramatic bow before his daughter, offering her his hand and winking as she takes it. The band strikes up a lively tune as he sweeps her up into his arms, and even though it’s scandalously informal, as he’s just holding her and spinning around, her whoops and giggles make it worth it. When he glances up, he sees the eyes of his citizens gone soft at the sight of them, and he realizes that maybe the informality isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Katara finds them soon after, swooping in to give Izumi a hug and a kiss on her cheek, and he has to fight the urge to do the same to Katara. Though such a display of affection for his mistress and mother of his child wouldn’t exactly be out of place in this setting, he knows it would be out of place with  _ her. _

Katara snakes her hand around Izumi, and for a second he thinks she means to take her from him, but then her hand settles on the center of his back, and she looks up at him with a shy smile and asks, “can I dance with you both?”

“Of course,” he says, only stuttering a little, and he shifts to settle Izumi’s hand on his shoulder so he can hold her mother’s. Katara presses in close, helping to bear Izumi’s weight as they sway together as a family, and his heart feels so full it could burst.

They don’t dance together for long—he’s called away to socialize, and Katara herds Izumi over to get a snack, and soon the evening passes with an air of cheerful celebration, his tense anxiety over Izumi’s reception going slack in the warmth. Still, though, he feels drained, and he worries this event will run much later than he truthfully has energy for.

Eventually Katara tracks him down, holding a sleeping Izumi on her hip, and she nudges him to get his attention.

“I think I’m going to take her to bed,” she says, leaning in close enough for him to catch a whiff of her perfume. “I just didn’t want to disappear on you.”

“I can take her,” he offers, hasty to set down his drink and make an escape. “You looked like you were having fun—no need to stop on her account.”

She shrugs, shuffling the child higher onto her hip. “It’s alright, I can do it--but if you wanted to help me put her to bed I wouldn’t mind.”

He follows her through the crowd with a hand on the small of her back, and every time he catches the eye of one of the partygoers he gets a smile in return.

He notices Katara’s shoulders relax as they retreat to the privacy of the royal apartments, and even though they’ve shared his bed for months, he still feels a little thrill at the base of his spine to follow Katara into his chambers.

“Can you hold her while I fetch out her sleeping things?” Katara whispers over her head.

“Let her sleep; I can get them.”

Katara gives him a warm smile as she watches him putter about the room, and it brightens when he draws up beside them with pajamas in hand, deftly plucking the crown out of his daughter’s hair as he drops a kiss on her forehead.

“I really can handle this, Katara, if you want to get back to the party.”

“I appreciate that Zuko, but I don’t think that I do.”

“You seemed like you were having a good time at least,” he says, unfolding the sleep garments as Katara peels Izumi out of her robe. “Making friends.”

“Are you talking about Ming Yun?”

“I didn’t know his name, but I suppose I am.”

She squints at him. “I healed his little sister at the clinic a few weeks ago. It’s apparently inspired him to fund a medical school, and he wants me to teach there.”

He frowns thoughtfully. “Is there anything you can even teach a firebender?”

She opens and closes her mouth a few times before she answers, managing to get Izumi into her pyjamas without waking her. “Yes. Plenty, in fact, but I don’t feel like diving into it right now.”

He hums, satisfied with that, and starts to tug off his boots. “So it was just a professional relationship he was interested in?”

She puts her hands on her hips. “Alright, quit being coy. What are you really asking me, Zuko?”

He pauses, wanting to be honest when he answers, and he’s reminded of a similar conversation they’d had, back when they’d just started sharing a bed. “I think what I’m trying to say is that—if you ever needed a night off, if you ever wanted to have  _ company _ , I want you to know that you can.”

She narrows her eyes. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“When you were leaving, you said…you said you wanted a chance at happiness,” he glances up at her, and finds her brow furrowed and her eyes searching. “I just want you to know that even though you’re here and we’re doing  _ this _ —” he gestures between them, at the child and at the room, “—you can still take that shot. I won’t stand in the way of that.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, and he can feel her gaze on him. Slowly, she paces around to sit next to him on the bed, sighing as her weight settles on the mattress. “I was in a lot of pain when I said that, Zuko. It wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry.”

“I’m not trying to get you to apologize,” he says in a rush, twisting around to face her. “If you meet someone who can make you happy, then I sincerely want you to go for it.”

She turns her face towards him then, evaluating. “You really mean that, don’t you.”

It isn’t a question. “I do.”

Her eyes search him for another lingering moment before she leans forward. His heart does a flip in his chest as he thinks for a frantic second that she’s leaning in for a kiss, but then she slips her arms around his waist and settles her cheek on his shoulder, looping him into a loose and tender hug. He sighs into her hair, tucking his arms around her waist, and they hold each other for spirits-know-how-long, just breathing together.

“I am happy, Zuko,” she whispers into his collarbone, giving him a little squeeze. “I think I really am.”

“Good,” he sighs, his breath ruffling her hair. “I want you to be.”

And if he lets his lips press against the top of her head in that moment in the barest sketch of a kiss, he hopes she doesn’t hold it against him. 

***

The day after the debut, Iroh starts to wheedle him about taking a vacation. Zuko can’t say why he’s resistant to the idea, only that he is. Stubbornness is perhaps not one of his best traits, but it does number among his most prominent, and the more Iroh advises him to take a break, the more determined he is to not give him the satisfaction of heeding him.

Two weeks into their private standoff, Uncle employs a new and relentless strategy.

“Daddy,” Izumi says in her most suspiciously sweet voice, hopping up onto his lap where he sits at his desk, working through yet another dinner. “Uncle Grandpa says that you have a house on the beach!”

Zuko flicks a glance at Iroh, loitering in the doorway with his face a mask of innocence. 

“That’s right, cinderblossom, I do.”

“And he says, he says when you go to the house you get to swim in the ocean and build sandcastles and eat mangoes until your stomach hurts and you’re not allowed to do  _ any work _ at  _ all _ !”

His glance hardens into a glare. The scoundrel was even  _ whistling _ . “Did he now.”

She nods vigorously. “He said it’s a special place for the royal family to  _ relax  _ and that it’s a  _ crime _ I haven’t gone yet!” she looks over at Uncle for some support with the emphasis in this line—clearly she’s being coached, because Uncle has to prompt the next bit. “Especially since now I’m officially the princess!”

As she launches into an ad-libbed chorus of  _ please please please, _ yanking with enthusiasm at the collar of his robes, he shoots Iroh a withering look. “This is cheating, Uncle.”

The old man just chuckles from the doorway, looking extremely pleased with himself.

***

“Hey, so I was thinking,” Zuko starts, sliding into bed without a plan. Katara looks up from the letter she’d been reading, her fingers stilling their idle strokes in Izumi’s hair. He’s late for bed—there was extra work to be done, now that a vacation was on the horizon, and the child is fast asleep. He clears his throat. “I was thinking about taking Izumi to Ember Island, sometime soon. Thought she might like to see the beach.”

“Iroh finally wore you down, huh?” Katara says, a wry smile on her lips. He sags.

“How did you know about that?”

“He tried to enlist me in his persuasion campaign,” she says, setting down her letter on her nightstand. “You know how he gets, especially when he smells a challenge. I told him I wouldn’t get in the middle of you two.”

“Well guess who he enlisted instead?” Zuko scowls, mirth creeping into his voice. Her eyes flick down to the sleeping child, incredulous.

“Oh, now  _ that’s _ hardly fair.”

“That’s what I said!” He whispers, tossing his arms up, indignant. “Him, I can say no to. But her?”

“Well is there any  _ real _ reason you can’t go?”

He sighs. “Not really. I mean, I think I had it in my head that we should stick around in the capitol for a while after the coronation. Be a presence,” he waves his hand around vaguely, “that sort of thing.”

She cocks her head. “Well, what if you said you were introducing your daughter to more of her country?”

“It’s a thought,” he says, sighing heavily as he slides under the covers. “Honestly I don’t even know if it’ll cause problems to go right now. I’m probably just hanging onto anxiety I had about the coronation…I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know?”

“I see where you’re coming from,” she says gently, reaching over Izumi to stroke his hair back from his forehead; he suppresses a shiver at her touch. “But you’ve got to remember that good things  _ do  _ happen to you  _ some _ times _ , _ Zuko.”

She’s still stroking his hair, sleepy contentment in her eyes, and his chest fills with a tight, buzzing warmth. “Yeah, you’re right,” he says, voice raspy and dry. “They do, sometimes.”

She gives him a little smile, satisfied, and withdraws her hand to wiggle down into the covers. “So when are you leaving?”

“End of the week,” he says, bending down the sconces. “I figure we’ll be gone five days or so.”

She hums, letting silence congeal between them for a moment before she asks, in a small voice, “can I come along?”

He shoots up onto his elbow, choking on his own discourtesy. “Of  _ course _ you can, Katara, you’re always—Spirits, I had no idea you’d even  _ want  _ to…”

“Well I’m not about to let you three have all the fun without me,” She scoffs, teasing. It almost assuages the clench in his chest.

“I just thought…after the last time you were there, I mean,” and spirits, he feels so awkward, bringing it up. “Just that you might not want to go back.”

Her smile goes wicked then, eyes warm, and she props herself up on an elbow. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Zuko,” she purrs. “I recall having a  _ lovely  _ time, last time I was there.”

His brain whites out. Was that—is she  _ flirting _ with him? Or is he just imagining what he wants to hear?

Probably that. It had to be.

He’s still reeling when her tone changes. “In all seriousness, though, I appreciate your concern,” she sighs, “but you should know that those memories don’t hurt, for me. Just because the bad times were bad, doesn’t mean the good times weren’t good. You know?”

He swallows, and his throat feels thick and dry. “If you’re sure.”

“I am,” she says, settling back down with her hand under her cheek. “Besides. It’s been a long time since I had any decent surfing.”

That makes him snort with laughter, and before he knows it they’re both laughing, stuffing their fists against their mouths to try to keep quiet. It feels so good to laugh with her again so easily, and it underscores her point that sometimes good things do happen to him--like finding her friendship again, even after everything they’d put each other through.


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My humblest thanks, as ever, to everyone who is reading along and commenting. It is a sweet, sweet reward for the labor of writing.
> 
> I prostrate myself before DisConsulate, the ever-patient, for reading every beleaguered draft of this chapter that I wrote, and encouraging me when I felt lost.

Their first afternoon on the island is awhirl with activity, as the adults take shifts supervising Izumi’s newfound obsession with the sea while trying to accomplish the necessities of settling in. They have staff at the beach house sent ahead to get everything prepared, but Katara decides she’d rather cook their supper that night--a campfire stew with fresh-caught shellfish, for old time’s sake. 

Uncle keeps an eye on Izumi while Katara enlists Zuko’s help preparing the ingredients, shucking oysters and chopping vegetables. He spends the last of the daylight hours bumping elbows with her in the kitchen, trading jokes and idle thoughts, and he realizes it’s the first time she’d gone out of her way to spend time with him and him alone. His hands start to shake as it dawns on him, as he tries to hold himself back from reading into it, from hoping that it means what he wants it to.

Because even if it does—even if she longs for him like he longs for her—they’re no longer young and reckless. They have shared responsibilities now, and lives that would be difficult to untangle from one another, and he’s invested too much in keeping things cordial with her to ever let himself have anything more or anything less.

“Here,” she calls from the stove, yanking him from his gloom. “Give it a taste and tell me what’s missing.” 

“You know what I’m going to say,” he says, toweling off the last of their prep dishes. She rolls her eyes.

“ _ Other _ than fire flakes. Come over here, I don’t want to spill.”

He allows himself to be beckoned on shuffling feet, drawing up close enough that he can feel the steam roiling off the pot on his cheeks. Katara lifts a spoon of the broth up to his mouth to taste, hand underneath to catch the drips, and he steadies her arm with a hand on her wrist as he dips in to taste it. And he doesn’t mean to make it seem so intimate, but her eyes are  _ right ther e _ _,_ and he always has trouble looking anywhere else when he’s got the option of looking in her eyes, and besides, it’s not like looking at the soup is going to tell him anything. She squints back in thought, and sips a little from the spoon herself, and he watches as she swallows and licks her lips, considering.

He wants so badly to kiss her. Agni, but he  _ wants _ .

“What do you think?” she asks, settling a hand on her hip.

“Huh?”

“The soup. What do you think it needs?”

“Oh,” he mutters, embarrassed, wrenching his attention from her face. “Uh. I can’t tell. What do you think?”

She brings the spoon to her lips again, still squinting at him, and he doesn’t think she means it to be suggestive, the way she sips another taste from it, but. Well. 

“Don’t make fun of me,” she hedges.

He smirks. “No promises.”

She cuts him a playful glare over her shoulder as she goes digging in the spice rack, pulling out an open jar of fire flakes and depositing a generous pinch in the simmering broth. 

He wolf-whistles at her, and she snorts a laugh even as she rolls her eyes at him in response. “Never in a hundred years would I have bet on this happening.”

“I’m starting to kind of like them, I think?” she admits, stirring to incorporate. “Not like the rest of you, but they’ve been in every meal I’ve eaten since coming back. I’m starting to miss them in their absence.”

He folds his arms and leans against the counter, trying to hide his affection behind a smug expression. “Just you wait, Katara. We’ll make a Fire Nation Citizen of you yet.”

The smile she shoots back in response is not playful, or bantering, like he’d expected--it’s just familiar, warm, and so lovely he nearly sighs out loud. Another swell of longing breaks over him, threatening to take him out at the knees, and spirits but he wants to crowd her against the countertop, thread his fingers through her hair and kiss her breathless.

He takes a deep breath into the feeling, and lets it go.

***

Katara sleeps in the next morning, past their meditations, katas, and past breakfast, and he tries to keep Izumi quiet as she gushes with excitement to get down to the beach. It feels familiar to be keeping quiet in the morning in this house--his mother had always slept later than the rest of them, no inner fire to rouse her at Agni’s first light, and he remembers assembling breakfast trays to bring to her in bed. It had always put a smile on her face, and he struggles to remember why he hadn’t done the same for Katara the last time they’d visited here.

Oh, right. Because he’d  _ also _ stayed in bed past breakfast.

He shivers, a bolt of lust snaking down his spine, and he cracks open a cupboard in search of a tray.

“Hey cinderblossom, do you want to help me do something nice for your mom?”

She gives him an exaggerated nod, still keeping quiet, and wanders over to his side in the kitchen. He hefts her up onto his back so he can keep his hands free, and she clings to him, nestling her chin between his neck and shoulder. “What sorts of things does your mom like to eat for breakfast?”

“Mangoes!” Izumi crows, barely keeping her voice down.

“Yeah? Your mom likes mangoes for breakfast? Who else likes mangoes for breakfast?”

“ _ I do _ _!_ ”

“ _ You _ do?!” he howls in mock-disbelief. “Princess  _ Izumi _ ?!” and he swings her around his waist, tickling her ribs and giving her a sound kiss on the cheek. She erupts in giggles, giving him a clumsy peck of her own before settling again on his back, legs linked around his ribs and arms circling his neck. She hums a meandering tune in his ear as he slices up some fruit for Katara’s breakfast, whispering a polite thank-you as he sneaks her an extra piece of fruit.

Uncle shuffles back into the kitchen to refill his teacup and gives them a twinkling smile. “Breakfast in bed for Lady Katara? What a lovely gesture!”

“Don’t get too excited, Uncle,” Zuko chides, arranging the mango slices prettily in a bowl. “I’m just being nice.”

Uncle waggles his enormous eyebrows, his grin widening. “Kindness opens many doors, Nephew.”

He fixes Iroh with a withering look, and the old man holds his hands up in surrender, resuming his puttering about the kitchen. Zuko returns to his task of filling bowls with little portions of the breakfast spread: miso broth, sweet pickles, a few pieces of fresh-grilled fish, and some rice porridge, seasoned liberally with black sesame, which had always been her favorite. He’s nearly forgotten that Uncle is even there when he reappears at his elbow and nestles a tiny vase in the corner of the tray with a definitive  _ chink _ .

“Oh no,” Zuko says, rounding on him with a serving spoon. “None of your meddling. Breakfast in bed is one thing--breakfast in bed  _ with flowers _ is another.”

“Who says they have to be from you?” Iroh says with an excessively casual shrug. “Besides, I’m sure Princess Izumi is much better suited to the task--what do you say, my dear?” Uncle says, offering his hand to the Princess as she hops down from her father’s back. “Shall we find a beautiful flower for your lady mother’s breakfast tray?”

“Mommy loves flowers!” Izumi says, and Iroh shoots him an  _ I-told-you-so _ look as she leads him out of the house.

He feels a clenching in his heart watching them go, a tangle of warmth and nervousness. Maybe breakfast in bed was too much, maybe it’d give her the wrong idea.

Well, it’d be the right idea, really, just a right idea she can’t be having.

He imagines what it would feel like to tell her, heedless of cost or consequence. He imagines the giddy moment between giving name to the thing and having to own it; the moment after she knows, and before her knowing changes everything. He imagines how free he would feel, how unburdened, just for that single second. Spirits, he almost  _ wants _ to tell her, if only so that he’ll stop choking on it whenever she’s around.

They return with a single blue wildflower to tuck into the vase, and the tray is declared fit for presentation; he breathes in, gathers up his fantasies, and lets them go.

***

Katara has shifted so that she’s face-down in the pillows when they go to wake her, Izumi hollering with barely-contained glee at the joy of revealing their surprise. Her mother is adorably groggy, hair a cascading mess as she squints at Izumi to get her bearings.

“What’s happening, sweetheart, is everything alright?” Katara mumbles, sitting up. That’s when she notices him hovering in the doorway, eyes going wide and her lips parting in a silent  _ oh. _

“We made you breakfast!” Izumi cheers, punctuating it with a jump on the mattress. Katara lays a hand on her to still her, gaping at Zuko as he shuffles forward and gently sets up the tray over her lap.

She blinks at them both for another second longer, before giving Izumi a one armed hug and kiss. “This is so nice, you two. What a lovely treat!”

“I didn’t actually cook anything,” Zuko says, bashful. “Just cut up some mango. Izumi said they’re your favorite.”

Katara snorts. “Oh, I bet she did.”

“Do you even like mangoes?”

“Oh, yeah, no of course I do. Just not like she does.” She looks back down at her breakfast, and smiles up at him again. “Look at all that sesame! Someone knows me well,” she says, giving him a wink.

He feels his good cheek go bright red.

He starts to relax as he watches them, Katara digging into her breakfast as Izumi reprises her giddy monologue about the beach, and it makes him wish he had kept up the painting skills Piandao had drilled into him, because he wants to put this moment in ink, and keep it forever.

Uncle knocks on the doorframe before she’s finished with her meal, announcing that he’s spotted a pod of dolphin-seals in the cove, and Izumi tears out of the room before he can even offer a formal invitation.

“Better catch up,” Katara says with a smirk. “She’s fast.”

“And I’m not a young man anymore!” Iroh laughs, waving at them over his shoulder as he retreats.

Alone now, Katara watches him watch her over her breakfast, shooting him quick, evaluating looks that leave him wracked with nameless anticipation. His palms go sweaty and he feels himself blushing again like a teenager, desperate to find something to say and coming up woefully short.

“This really was sweet of you, Zuko. Thank you.”

He shrugs, awkward. “I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“You’ve succeeded.”

He snorts. “I’m glad.”

She holds up her bowl of broth, a little smirk on her lips. “Can I get a warm-up?”

“Oh. Sure.” When it’s steaming, he gives it back.

“So what inspired this, then?” she waves a hand at her tray, sipping at her broth.

“It’s something I used to do for my mom, when we came here as kids. She always woke up after the rest of us, but I didn’t want her to eat breakfast alone, so I’d bring it to her and we’d share.”

She reaches out, gently taking his hand. “What a lovely memory,” she says, voice going soft. “I bet that was so precious to her.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, raising his eyes to meet hers. “Yeah, I’m really glad we had that time together.”

She hums, giving his hand a little squeeze before letting go to return it to her bowl. “We didn’t really do breakfast in bed in the South Pole,” she says, taking a long sip. “Since we all slept in one room and everything. But some mornings dad would take Sokka out ice-fishing, and I would stay under the furs with mom, and she’d tell me stories.”

“That also sounds nice,” he says, thinking about reaching for her hand again, and stopping himself.

“It was. It was nice to have that time.”

They’re silent for a moment, both sitting with their ghosts. 

“I’m glad we’re doing this, Zuko,” she says, barely above a whisper. “I’m glad she gets to grow up with both of us. I’m glad we both spend time with her, and I’m glad we all spend time together, too.” 

His voice catches in his throat. “Me too, Katara. I couldn’t do it without you.”

She gives him a watery smile, and squeezes his hand again.

***

The dolphin seals are long gone by the time they emerge from the house, and Izumi has committed her attention to collecting seashells with Uncle, and exploring the eddies and pools left behind in the low tide. Time passes in a warm and sticky haze; they go swimming and they lay on the beach; they build sandcastles and they ride waves, and as promised, he does not do any work at all. 

They eat a cold lunch in the shade of one of the broad-leafed trees that grow along the beach, and afterwards Zuko shows Izumi how to bury Uncle up to the neck in sand while he feigns a nap. She giggles madly when he pretends to wake up, and he remembers feeling the same mischievous glee that he sees on her face when he and Lu Ten had pulled the same pranks as children, and for a moment he wishes she had another child to share it with--a friend, maybe, or a cousin of her own.

Or a little sibling.

It’s an arresting thought, one that buzzes in his teeth, jangling in his blood like a badly-tuned shamisen. When he blinks he imagines Izumi building sandcastles with a smaller child, one with blue eyes and cherubic, soft brown curls, and he wants it so badly, not just for Izumi or for himself, but for Katara too. He knows she would love to have another waterbender in the family...

He shivers, and nearly jumps out of his skin when Katara asks, brow pinched, “You okay?”

“Fine,” he says, standing too quickly and beating a hasty retreat. “Just, uh, need to clear my head.”

He’s briefly tempted by a soak in the hot spring round back, but the idea of being so far from his family gives him pause. Besides, the only way he’s ever been able to clear his head is through meditation, so he finds a quiet spot on a bluff off the eastern side of the house, overlooking the beach and the sea, and lights a flame in his palm. He breathes with it, steady, until he’s reeled himself back in, and then levers himself back on the grass to watch the puffy clouds drift along overhead. He lays there long enough that the angle of the light changes, and he’s just starting to think about getting up when he hears footsteps in the grass nearby.

He sits up to see Katara approaching, arms crossed over her chest as the wind whips at her hair and clothing. She catches his eye, her face lighting up in a dazzling smile, and-- _ Agni strike him down _ \--she is so lovely he can hardly breathe.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” he croaks, leaning back on his hands.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Never,” he says, flashing her a smirk he really hopes is charming. She smirks back and settles close, folding her knees to her chest.

“Man. What a view.”

He sees the opportunity to say something corny, but doesn’t take it. “When it’s really clear you can see the easternmost island in the archipelago over that way.”

She leans into his shoulder to squint off in the direction he’s pointing, and he really hadn’t meant it that way, but then he catches the salty-sweet scent of seawater and skin that he’s always associated with her, and he has to grit his teeth to keep from leaning in, to keep from wrapping an arm around her to keep her close.

“Huh. Maybe it’s not quite clear enough today,” she shrugs, and then settles back beside him. “So what have you been up to over here?”

“I hardly know,” he scoffs. “It’s been so long since I had this much time to myself. I can’t decide if I love it or if I’m going out of my mind.”

“You need to take a break more often,” she chides, swatting at his arm. “You’ll work yourself into an early grave.”

He can only hum in response, hyper-aware of her body beside him. This is the second time in as many days that she’d chosen to spend time alone with him, he realizes, and as he thinks back through all the little moments they’d shared, all the smiles and touches and kind words, he finds a scrap of courage and holds it tight.

“So I know I was kind of awkward this morning at breakfast,” he starts, and she snorts a little laugh beside him. He elbows her for it, indulging in a playful moment before turning serious again.  “What I think I was trying to say though, with breakfast,” he clears his throat, “was thank you. This thing that we’re doing...this family that we have, I--” he swallows. “It just...I never thought it could feel so comfortable. And the only reason it all works is because of you.”

She tuts beside him. “You give me too much credit.”

“Really, I don’t,” he says, turning to look at her. “It just--you could hate me, Katara. You could hate my guts forever and you’d be completely justified--”

“I wouldn’t say  _ that _ ,” she scoffs, sitting up. “Zuko, for how things ended up before all this...we’re both at fault. You have just as much right to hate me as I do to hate you.”

He tilts his head to the side, searching her eyes. “But I could never hate you, Katara.”

Her lips quirk in the barest hint of a smile. “Then you understand.”

She turns her face out to sea, scanning the horizon, and he leans back on his elbows again, tracing his gaze over the delicate curve where her neck meets her shoulders. He lets himself imagine how good it would feel to kiss her there, before breathing into the feeling and letting it go.

She sighs into the wind, inclining her head just a little towards him. “Do you ever think that maybe...maybe we were too young for what we had?”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “Have you been talking to Uncle?”

“Maybe,” she smirks back. “But I’m not asking him--I’m asking you.”

Zuko licks his lips, sitting up and draping an arm across his knees. His eyes catch on their daughter playing in the surf, and for once, he feels no terror at the prospect of being honest.

“I know I was afraid of how I felt, at the time,” he starts. “I didn’t know how to talk about anything, least of all my feelings. And I definitely didn’t have the maturity to treat you the way you deserved.”

She turns to face him again, a sad quirk to her lips. “Neither did I, you know. You deserved better too.”

He regards her, pensive, taking in the fan of her lashes over the pink blush on her cheeks, and he can see it unfolding, his chance, and he draws breath to say  _ do you think maybe, if we’re careful, we could give it another try? _

But then Izumi screams.

The sound cuts straight into his heart like ice in his veins, and he looks up to see Uncle scooping her out of the water. Katara’s already up and moving, leaping off the bluff and sprinting towards her, and he’s only a beat behind, catching up just as they reach her, crumpled in Uncle’s lap. 

There’s an angry welt arcing across her stomach, but she’s still conscious and there’s no bleeding, and he breathes a little sigh of relief—just a jellyfish sting. Painful, frightning, but not especially dangerous. Uncle lets him take her into his lap, her mother conducting a quick examination of the wound as she calls up water from the ocean.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he coos, kissing his daughter’s forehead. “It’s okay, your mom is here, you’re going to be alright.”

Her shuddering sobs start to even out as Katara splays her glowing hands over the welt, and Izumi takes big gulps of air in between little whimpers of pain, chest heaving. His heart wrenches at the sight of it, so he wriggles his fingers into the palm of her little hand.

“Squeeze me when it hurts, okay?” and she does, surprisingly strong for someone so tiny. “Attagirl. You’re doing so good--being so brave. You’re gonna feel better in no time, I promise.”

Izumi nods, still whimpering a little, so he strokes her hair away from her face and gives her forehead another kiss. 

“That should just about do it,” Katara says, pressing a kiss to Izumi’s belly where the welt had been. “Feeling better, snowflake?”

Izumi sniffs, eyes huge, and nods. She sits up in his lap and reaches out for her mother, but once Katara has her in her arms Izumi turns and reaches for him. 

“You were so brave, my little one,” he murmurs, giving her a kiss on the cheek as he crowds in close, letting Izumi wrap her free arm around his neck to keep him there. 

Katara leans into him too, catching his eye over Izumi’s shoulder, and so he settles his other hand in the small of her back, bare between the pieces of her swimsuit. The tension ebbs from her face as he strokes little circles on her spine with his thumb, and he holds them both until Izumi leans back and rubs her eyes, little fists perfunctory, before asking to be let down so she can go back into the ocean.

“You sure you want to go back, sweetheart?” Katara asks, setting her down with a wary crook of her eyebrow.

Izumi nods. “I’ll be careful now. I promise.”

Katara still looks uneasy as their daughter rushes back into the waves. “She gets that from you, you know.”

“The stubbornness?”

“I was going to say the bravery,” she smirks. “But we can say stubbornness too.”

He shakes his head. “Nah. That comes from your side of the family. That and the sometimes ill-advised optimism.”

“You’re calling  _ me _ stubborn?” She crows, a playful edge to her voice. “ _ You _ ?”

And he tries to glare back at her, keep up the banter, but his face goes warm and soft instead. “I was calling you brave.”

A blush creeps over her cheeks as she shoots back a crooked smile. “Well, then,” she says. “Maybe she gets that from both of us.”

***

Habitually, Izumi bathes after dinner and before bed, and that night is no different. It’s a good thing, too--Uncle has the kitchens make a special dessert for Izumi with mangoes and sticky rice and coconut syrup, and though it’s a phenomenal hit with the whole family, there ends up being a non-zero amount of syrup in Izumi’s hair, which neither parent is particularly keen on introducing to the bed linens.

While Katara tends to the bath--“waterbender, remember?”--Uncle sets up a pai sho board and makes sad old man faces at Zuko until he sits down across from him and allows himself to be trounced. 

About halfway through their second game--Zuko still has most of his pieces, which he finds deeply unsettling--Iroh looks up and settles his hands on his knees, fixing Zuko with a pensive squint.

“You are playing like you have something on your mind. Can I take a guess that it has something to do with lady Katara?”

Zuko does not look up from the board, though he feels his face going red. He sets his jaw. “What makes you think that?”

“I know you, Nephew,” Iroh says. “And I know what it looks like to be so sick with love you can hardly stand yourself.”

He picks up his mountain tile and moves it to the left, raising an eyebrow at Uncle. “You’ve been spending too much time in Mother’s romance library.”

“That, my dear nephew, is not a denial.”

Zuko sighs, casting himself back in his chair. “It’s just...there’s a lot to consider besides just feelings, Uncle.” 

Uncle pointedly does not make a face, and keeps his eyes trained on the board. 

“...Yes, alright? I love her, but I just...I feel like between my station, and our history, and our daughter, I’m not at liberty to just tell her how I feel. I mean, what’s she supposed to do with that?!”

“I know you and lady Katara have a history,” Uncle begins, tacit and gentle, “but to watch you together now, you both seem to have come so far past the tumult of your youth.” He picks up a tile, hovers over the board, and replaces it. “I wonder if you and lady Katara might find happiness together now, especially upon the foundations you’ve laid by raising a child together, and overcoming your previous hardships.”

Zuko scrubs his hand down his face, sighing, and when he opens his eyes again Uncle has captured his mountain tile. He frowns. “I’m not so sure.”

“Why not?”

“I just feel like I’m not good enough for her…” He moves his jade tile to the side, evading a trap Uncle had used on him last round. “I mean, I want to be. But she’s given me chance after chance to get better, and I keep coming up short.”

Uncle catches his eye and holds it, leaning his elbows on his knees. “It is a lucky thing to love a woman who makes you want to be a better man. Luckier still to love a woman who gives you the chance to become one. But good gracious, Nephew, do not squander that chance.”

His heart twists. He feels wretched. “But how will I know if I’m worthy of her?”

“That’s up to the lady herself, my dear boy,” Uncle says, giving him a wan smile. Zuko covers his face with his hands, and Uncle settles a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll never be perfect, Zuko. Do not expect that of yourself. What you can expect of yourself--and what you can promise her--is that you will work hard to be the person she needs. That when you’re wrong, when you come up short, you will make the effort to change.”

Zuko peeks at him through his fingers. “That’s--that’s all?”

Uncle nods, giving him an affirmative hum.

Zuko squints in disbelief. “But it sounds so simple!”

“It’s much easier said than done, of course,” Uncle says airily, returning his attention to the pai sho board, “but that’s the foundation of every successful marriage.”

His stomach drops out from under him. “Wait, wait,” Zuko sputters, reeling. “Who said anything about  _ marriage _ ?”

Uncle skips his tile across the board, not looking up. “...is that not the goal?”

“She can’t be  _ Fire Lady! _ ”

“And why not? She’s of noble enough birth, and has a sound head for diplomacy and governing. Certainly you have considered worse options.”

Zuko furrows his brow. “She’s  _ water tribe _ .”

“She’s already mother to the crown princess--I can scarcely see how her ethnicity can play any further role in the argument.”

Zuko considers this for a second, feeling the magnitude of possibility yawning before him. 

One by one, the things that had held him back from her fall away, like autumn leaves clinging on through deep winter, yielding only to the new growth in spring. It’s like a brilliant dawn is cresting inside him, driving out the shadows of his doubt as warmth drives out the frost.

He can have this. He can  _ really have _ this.

When he looks back at the pai sho board, he sees that he has lost.


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating's gone up. Note the new smut tags. 
> 
> It gets steamy in this chapter, folks.

It’s hard to focus on another game after their conversation, so Zuko wanders down to the shore to digest it all, watching the moonlight catch on the waves. His thoughts come in wordless crashing swells, syncopated like his heartbeat, more melodic than verbal. Thinking about her doesn’t feel so much like thinking as it does like dancing: uncomplicated, instinctual, but not without tenderness or grace. Anticipation hums in his body as he imagines confessing to her, the tangled fear around his heart loosening with every reprisal of his fantasy. _I love you_ , he imagines saying. _I think I always have_.

He takes a deep breath, unwinding the last of his apprehension, and lets it go.

And it does still occur to him that she might not feel the same way, but he’s relieved to find he does not fear this outcome. After everything they’ve worked through, everything they’ve overcome, surely she could forgive him for loving her, just as he could forgive her for not loving him back. Forgiveness is sort of their thing, after all.

“Hey.”

He startles, flames leaping into his hands as he whirls around--but it’s only her, wearing a breezy robe over a wrap skirt, and an amused expression. “Did I scare you?”

“Just a little,” he says, settling himself back into the sand. “I was lost in thought.”

“Did you want to be alone?” she asks, voice gentle. “Or is it alright If I stay?”

He gives her a shy smile over his shoulder. “I’d always rather have you around, Katara.”

Something in her eyes goes soft at that, and she comes to join him on the sand, sitting a minimal respectable distance from him.

“Izumi?” he asks.

“Uncle’s reading to her, bless him. I don’t think I’ve got another rendition of _Dragon Queen of Hira’a_ in me this week.”

“That’s fair,” he snorts. “No accounting for taste, I suppose.”

They spend a while chatting idly, cracking bad jokes and enjoying each other’s company and watching the moon climb higher in the sky. The urgency he had felt before she appeared melts away, and he feels buoyant in its absence, content to float along with the current of her laughter. It’s not that it doesn’t feel important to tell her, but rather it seems less of a revelation somehow, as her eyes linger on his, and he answers her earnest smiles with ones of his own.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you for letting me tag along on the family vacation,” she says, folding her knees up to her chest and circling her arms around them.

His lips quirk up in a half smile. “It wouldn’t have been a family vacation without you, Katara. I’m really glad you wanted to come.”

She tilts her head, regarding him, eyes soft and fond. “Me too.”

They stare at each other for a few heartbeats, and he feels himself leaning in, his body ready to betray him before he’s come up with something to say, so he yanks himself away, directs his gaze back to the sea instead of her lips. He won’t kiss her without knowing that she wants him to, but before he’s worked out a graceful way to ask, she leans over and rests her temple on his shoulder, light as a feather.

“Is this alright?” she asks, voice almost too soft to hear over the waves.

Zuko hums his assent, brushing his cheek against her hair.

“Mm,” she hums back. “You’re nice and warm.”

“Are you cold?” he asks, hooking an arm around her waist to pull her closer and bending his body temperature up and out.

“Not especially,” she sighs, “but the warmth is nice anyway.”

He leaves his arm around her as they lapse into another silence, and it feels entirely natural to hold her like this, even as his heart hammers in his chest and his mind scrambles for something suave to say. She picks her head up after a moment, regarding him with a furrowed brow, and he’s about to ask if he’s said something wrong when she says, “Zuko, I don’t think I’m being honest with you. Not the way I promised to be.”

A bolt of cold panic rolls down his spine. “You know you can tell me anything, Katara,” he says, voice thick. 

She closes her eyes, looking a little pained. “It’s not like that…” her hand settles on his thigh, just above his knee. “It’s--you know how when I first got back, you said you’d do anything to make me happy here?”

“...Have I done something wrong?”

“No, Zuko, nothing, you haven’t done anything,” she says in a rush, grabbing his hand and holding it in both of hers. She bites her lip, looking at him intently. “Can you do me a favor and, just, forget about that for a second? Because I can’t say what I’m about to say if you still feel like you owe me something.”

He blinks, confused. “Okay...?”

“Okay,” she says, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes. “Remember a few weeks ago, after the coronation, when you said...you said if I found someone who gave me a shot at happiness, you wanted me to take it?”

“…I do.”

“I was trying to tell you then, but I don’t think I was being clear,” she reaches to cup his scarred cheek, and he risks a glance into her eyes, shining with unshed tears and a shy, radiant smile. “It’s you, Zuko. You’re my shot.”

His heartbeat slows, or maybe time does, as relief washes over him in a trickle, then in a flood. He blinks, and swallows, and when he opens his eyes again she’s still looking at him with trepidatious joy on her face, still cupping his scar in her cool hand.

“It’s always been you,” she whispers, lips quivering. “It was you when I said it the first time and it’s been you ever since--”

He dives in to kiss her, the last of her words muffled against his mouth as her hands fly up to cradle his jaw. She smells like home, like sea breeze and the palace laundry and that warm, sun-sweet scent that has always been hers. It melts his heart to notice, as he buries his hands in her hair the way he’s been dying to for weeks, or even years. They hadn’t kissed like this much, before--soft and deep and reverent, somewhere between supplication and desire, neither trying to dominate, just...kissing. He sighs against her lips, and she whimpers, pressing her body against his as he breaks the kiss.

“I love you,” he says, his voice gone low and rasping. “Katara I’ve loved you this whole time.”

“Even back then?” She whimpers, her eyes squeezed shut, and she sounds so hopeful.

“And before,” he says, petting her hair away from her face. “I can’t remember feeling like myself without loving you.”

She sobs, or maybe laughs, and her hands fly to cover her mouth. He peppers kisses over her cheeks and forehead and nose, anywhere he can reach.

“How come you never said?” And spirits, she _is_ crying, but she’s smiling too, so he thumbs away her tears and kisses her cheeks in their wake.

“Because I was a coward,” he says, “or maybe just because I was very stupid, and very young.”

That makes her laugh, and he laughs a little too, bumping their noses together. “Well I was younger, and at least as stupid,” she says, twirling her fingers into a lock of his hair. “It took me a little longer to realize what I felt.” Her eyes go sad then, and she sniffs. “I’ve always told myself if I’d…you know, if it’d occurred to me a little sooner, I wouldn’t have left.”

“I think you needed to, Katara,” he says, the admission twisting in his chest as he hauls her closer. “We both had so much growing up to do. It’s better we didn’t get in each other’s way to do it.”

Her bottom lip quivers as she looks into his eyes again, and her voice is broken and small when she says, “I _missed_ you though. So, so desperately, I missed you.”

“As I missed you,” he murmurs, kissing her brow before dipping in to claim her mouth again.

The kiss is lingering and sweet, and as it warms he feels her smiling against his lips. The ache in his cheeks tells him he’s smiling too, cupping her jaw and threading his fingers in the soft hair at the nape of her neck. After a minute of it she starts to giggle against his mouth, so he releases her to ask what’s so funny.

“All this time,” she huffs, eyes sparkling. “I could have kissed you whenever I wanted! I could have kissed you at her coronation—”

“Or when we got the news from the fire sages—”

“Or when you gave her that great little speech, after she burned her doll.”

He smiles. “I could have told you how lovely you looked, every time I thought about it.”

She sighs. “I could have held you, every time you looked like you needed a friend.”

He hums, nosing little kisses from her temple to her jaw. “I could have been rubbing your neck, when I can see that it pains you.”

She furrows her brow, drawing away so she can look at him. “You can tell that my neck hurts?”

“Mm-hm,” he nods, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “You hold your shoulders so stiffly, after a tough shift at the clinic. Sometimes I catch you trying to rub it when we’re reading before bed.”

He watches a baffled smile spread over her face, and then she’s pouncing on him and kissing him again, arms locked around his neck, her knees hitting the sand on either side of his hips. He groans into her mouth at the contact, his hands circling her waist to steady her, and she huffs a little against his lips. He tips his head to deepen the kiss, and she lets him in, whimpering as he licks into her mouth and sucks on her lower lip.

“Mm,” she hums, as he breaks away from her mouth and makes his way to her jaw. “There are other things I could have been doing too, all this time…” and he recognizes the purr in her voice, knows what it means, and a shiver of anticipation rolls down his spine as he grips her hip in answer.

“You going to leave me guessing about what?” he rasps, latching a hot kiss to the soft spot behind her ear as he pets down to the tops of her thighs. She pitches in his arms, whimpering for a second before she remembers the game.

“How about,” she huffs, breathless, curling her fingers into his tunic as he nips his way down to where her neck meets her shoulder, “you take me back to that hot spring behind the house, and I’ll show you?”

He nips her one last time, giving her thighs a quick squeeze, before they’re disentangling themselves from one another and scrambling upright. He twines their fingers together and kisses her knuckles before he takes off at a half-jog towards the backside of the house, and she keeps up, light on her feet even as they pick through the dense copse of trees that hides the little pool from view.

Steam curls off the surface of the water and lingers in silver shafts of moonlight that make their way through the leaves, lending a mysterious, timeless romance to the place. The area immediately around the edge of the pool is paved with even flagstone, and there’s a little bench near the edge of the water for dippers and towels and other sundry things. Inside the pool, he knows there are seats hewn into the rock, which gives him a number of ideas, only some of which he’d been able to put into action last time they’d come here.

But he can’t make it all the way into the water without stopping to kiss her, and when he does it’s slow and primal, all haste abandoned in favor of drinking her in, one breathy moan at a time. She goes up on tiptoes, whimpering as he lifts the hem of her tunic to map the small of her back, her waist, her spine. He draws his fingers across the softness of her stomach, heating his hands as he slips them up her ribs to tease over the wraps of her sarashi. She keens in anticipation, sighing into his mouth as he molds a hand to her breast.

He breaks away to tug her tunic off over her head, splaying his hands over her hips when he swoops back in to kiss her again. She tilts up her jaw and he takes the hint, nipping his way up the column of her neck and wringing a moan from deep in her chest.

“I’ve missed the way you kiss me,” she hums, sliding her hands over his back before tugging at the tie around his waist. “Spirits, were you always this good?”

He smirks against her jaw. “It’s not like I’ve been practicing.”

“Well,” she huffs a little laugh, “you could have fooled me.” 

He presses another searing kiss to her lips in response, cupping her waist and holding her tight. She slips her hands inside his tunic, sliding her cool palms over his bare chest, and he hisses a little at the contrast in temperature, nipping at her earlobe as she pushes it off over his shoulders, letting it drop on the stones beneath their feet.

“Hold still. Let me look at you,” she murmurs, breaking away from the kiss with a dreamy shine to her eyes that roots him to the spot. His heart does backflips in his chest as she slides her fingers over the muscles of his arms, and he feels a little burst of pride at the admiration on her face.

“You see me without a shirt all the time, Katara.”

“I do,” she admits, swiping her thumb along his pectoral, and he jumps in response, biting back a moan. When he looks back down at her, her eyes are blown black with desire. “I just haven’t been at liberty to enjoy the view.”

“Oh, you’ve always been at _liberty_ ,” he huffs, but then she grazes her fingernails over his stomach. “Agni, _fuck_.”

She flashes him a wicked grin. “You’re more sensitive than I remember.”

“It’s been six years since anyone touched me,” he smirks through gritted teeth, “I’m liable to be sensitive.” 

Her eyes flick back up to his face, and he’s briefly stunned by the expression she wears, affection and desire mingled in her gaze, at once familiar and thrillingly new. He feels absurdly like this is the first moment in his life anyone has ever seen him, seen every miserable pock and fissure on the dark side of his soul, and opened their arms to him anyway. But then, of course, he’d seen the worst of her too, and it had never stopped him from wanting her. It had never even gotten in the way.

A grin spreads over her lips, and she tips up her chin in challenge.

“Well. Let’s see just how sensitive you _are_ , then.”

Up on tiptoes, she reels him into another slow and filthy kiss, splaying her hands over his abdomen and backing him up against one of the trees around the edge of the clearing. She makes quick work of the closures on his pants, but there is no desperation in her movements, no fickle haste, only the steady pulse of her wanting.

Her teeth graze over his pulse point as she pushes the garment down and takes him in hand, and he hisses, pressing his back against the tree behind him. She gives him an experimental stroke, and he pitches forward with a whispered curse. Grinning, she slinks down his body, tasting the scars on his chest and stomach and the tops of his thighs. He nearly loses his head in the tenderness of it.

“Wait,” he says, and she pauses, looking up at him through her lashes with his cock an inch away from her lips. He takes a second, his head spinning at the sight, before he can speak again. “I wanted to take care of you first.”

She tilts her head, eyes appraising, as she gives him a slow, thoughtful stroke that nearly makes his eyes roll back in his head. “Tempting offer, but,” and she shifts, tossing her hair over her shoulders and wrapping it around his hand, “I’ve had to restrain myself from taking you under your desk in the study for weeks, now, so please. Just let me have this.”

“Is this what you meant by _other thin_ \--oh _spirits Katara_ ,” he groans, as she stops teasing to swallow him down. His focus narrows to the heat of her mouth, and his fist in her hair, and the way her voice buzzes around him as she hums encouragement. Her pace is relentless, confident, wanton, and it’s not long before he’s slumped against the tree, gasping for breath, the tension of his arousal coiling tighter and tighter in his abdomen.

“Agni, Katara, I’m--” he sputters, trying to pull her back, but she redoubles her efforts, working her tongue over the underside of his shaft in that way that’s always driven him crazy, and in moments he’s spilling into her mouth with a choked-off groan.

She coaxes him through it, bringing him down slowly, and she makes sure he’s looking into her eyes when she swallows, releases him, and licks the last of it off her lips.

He blinks at her, slow and dazed, as she rolls back onto her heels and upright, her grin predatory and self-satisfied. She cups his chin, swiping her thumb along his bottom lip, and he realizes his mouth is hanging open, slack.

“Mm, there’s that look I wanted to see,” she says, pressing herself into his chest as she goes up on tiptoes to kiss him, and the fog in his brain settles enough for him to recover some of his game.

“You know, this just means I’ll get to take my time with you, now,” he rumbles in her ear, and delights as he feels a shiver ghost down her spine.

“Oh, I’m counting on it,” she whispers back, flashing a toothy smirk as she reaches around her back for the tucked end of her sarashi.

“Let _me_ do that,” he hisses, batting her hand away, and she giggles, ticklish, as his hands skitter around her ribs to ease the fabric away from her body.

“I was getting impatient,” she mewls, as he slides heated palms over her breasts, rolling a nipple between his knuckles. “Wanted you to touch me.”

“I thought I told you, darling,” he purrs in her ear, circling the other nipple with the pad of his thumb. “Anything I can give you, you can have.”

She recoils, suddenly serious, and cups his cheek. “Zuko, I told you--”

“I don’t mean--not like that, Katara,” he hurries, cutting her off, bringing his hands to her face and soothing her to silence. “But I want you to know--everything I have, everything I am,” he presses a kiss to her thumb, “I’m yours. I would be anyway.”

She lingers for another moment, cupping his face and searching his eyes as a wave of tears swells on her lashes. He catches them with his thumbs as they fall, and that seems to snap something in her, as she surges forward and throws her arms around his shoulders, burrowing her face into his neck and squeezing him tight.

“I love you, Zuko,” she whispers. “I never want to be parted from you again.”

“Then you won’t be,” he murmurs against her hair, pressing another kiss to her forehead. “I’ll move heaven and earth to keep you by my side.”

“And if they make you marry?”

“Then I’ll marry you, if you’ll have me, or I’ll marry no one at all.”

She presses herself against him, and the contact of naked skin on skin makes his body sing with pleasure, golden and honey-sweet. She leans up for another kiss and he dips in to meet her, cupping her jaw and pouring himself into it, answering the pledge on her lips with one of his own.

She sighs into his mouth, curling her fingers in his hair, and as he draws his fingers down her spine she whines with renewed need. One of his hands makes its way down to the knot of her wrap skirt, and then the hem of her undergarments beneath, tugging until they pool at her feet and she’s as naked as he is. She shivers, exposed to the night air, and presses herself closer to him. 

“Can we _please_ get in the hot spring now?”

“Are you cold, waterbender?” he teases, nipping at her ear and earning himself an indignant spank.

“You’re insufferable.”

“I hope you’re not,” he continues, grazing his teeth down her neck. “Because there are certain things I can’t do to you if you’re underwater...”

She shivers against him, and he takes a second to palm the swell of her hip before bracing his hands under her thighs and hauling her up his body. She yelps in surprise, wrapping her arms around him and raining kisses down the scarred side of his face. He peers around her to wade into the spring, swallowing her gasps as he sets her down around the edge of the pool, leaving just her calves and feet in the water. Settling between her knees, he kneels on the ledge hewn into the rock and takes one of her feet in his hands, digging his thumbs into the muscle and working out any tension he finds.

“I don’t remember this routine from last time,” she says, crooking an eyebrow at him.

He shrugs, dropping a kiss to the inside of her knee. “I’ve had time to get creative.”

She hums, a dreamy smile on her face as she leans back on her hands, giving him a fantastic view of her body, all bronze curves dappled in the moonlight, as he massages up her calves.

“So you’ve been thinking about it, then?” she asks, giving him a cocky smirk that nearly makes him abandon his plan and pull her into the water with him. “About what you’d do to me if you got the chance?”

“Can you fault me if I say yes?” he rumbles back, nosing a kiss to the softness of her inner thigh, and relishing the moan it draws from her.

“Hm,” she says, as he slips her thighs over his shoulders, her fingers threading into his hair. “I suppose I can’t.”

He chuffs a satisfied laugh against her center and sets her shivering, and he feels goosebumps raise over his skin in sympathetic anticipation. He starts out soft and teasing, earning gasps with tiny laps of his tongue, but then he gets a taste of her in truth, and she tastes the same as she always did, and his control is eclipsed by his hunger. 

He licks her open, long and deep, finding all her favorite spots and laving at them with heedless abandon, tearing a ragged moan from her throat. Her nails scrape against his scalp, tug at the roots of his hair; her heels dig into his back, and he curls his arms around her thighs to steady her.

“ _Spirits_ , Zuko, you always were so good at this...”

He licks a tight spiral around her, and from the way she keens, he thinks he’s proved her point.

“Need you,” she whines, trying to tug him back, trying to shuffle forward, but he digs his fingers into her thighs, holding her still with a bruising strength.

“I’m not ready for you yet,” he murmurs, glancing up at her as he returns to his task. She breathes a shuddering sigh, leaning back again, going pliant under his attention. “And in any case, you seem to be enjoying this.”

“I am,” she gasps, bucking her hips. “I just--oh _spirits_ \--don’t wanna come without you inside me...”

“Then don’t,” he says, slowing his pace until her legs start to shake around his head. “That is, if you think you can hold off…?”

“Everything’s a competition with you, isn’t it?” she huffs, sounding at once annoyed and completely wrecked.

He rolls the hard nub of her under his tongue, and he can’t help but grin against her as she swallows a scream. “Only when I’m winning.”

“Oh, you are such a--” but her protests falter on her lips as he curls a finger inside her, and she throws her head back, abandoning all pretense at keeping quiet.

He keeps his strokes slow and firm, taking her apart with a singular focus as her cries ring off the flagstones. Her peak slams into her, and he keeps pace, drawing it out as long as he can until she begs him to let up. She’s gasping for breath when he leans back, smirking as he wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist.

“Looks like I’ve still got it.”

She bends a splash of water into his cheek, and he chuckles, stepping back to make room for her as she slides into the spring.

“Pride is not a virtue, Fire Lord,” she chides, looping her arms around his neck and nuzzling soft kisses into the underside of his jaw. He folds her into his embrace, feeling her melt against him as he lays little kisses into her hairline.

“I was under the impression we’d abandoned virtue for the night,” he hums back, tipping up her chin and placing a kiss at the corner of her mouth. “Or don’t you want me to fuck you later?”

And even though she shivers in his arms, her eyes flash in challenge. “Like you could deny me.”

And he’s tempted to volley something back, keep the game going, but there’s just the briefest flicker of vulnerability in her eyes, so he kisses her instead, soft and deep and sure. Minutes tick by as they lose themselves in small touches, getting to know each other’s bodies again, tracing the even planes of muscle and the knobs of each other’s spines. He finds a knot of tension under one of her shoulder blades, and remembering the pain in her neck, gently turns her in his embrace to rub her back.

“Mmm, you don’t have to, Zuko,” she sighs, dreamy, allowing herself to be brought into his lap as he takes a seat.

“I want to, though,” he says, dropping a kiss to her shoulder as he works away at the knot. “And I need another minute, still, anway.”

She sighs again, finding the top of his thigh and petting soothing circles above his knee. “Me too,” she admits. “I guess we’re not as young as we used to be.”

He scoffs. “You’re not even twenty-five, Katara.”

“And I don’t feel a day over thirty,” she says drily, hissing as the knot skips out under his thumb. “Spirits, that’s a bad one.”

He bends to kiss the sting away, then brings up the heat in his palm to soften it some more. “I’d say you’re working too hard, but—”

“Oh _that’s_ rich, coming from you.”

“—I thought you might say that,” he laughs, massaging up the nape of her neck in search of the spot she’d been trying to soothe for weeks. When her breath hitches he knows he’s found it, her fingers digging into the meat above his knee until he’s rubbed it out, and she droops against his chest with a relieved sigh. 

“You know, you’re welcome to engage the royal masseuse,” he says, slinging his arms around her waist and leaning his chin on her shoulder.

“And why would I do that, when I can tempt you to take care of me instead?”

For some reason that sets him on edge, anxiety breaking over him like a wave. “Because I get busy,” he trails off, thinking of the way their relationship had faltered when they left Ember Island last time, and she must be able to tell, because she turns her head to kiss his scarred cheek.

“It’s not going to be the same as last time, Zuko,” she says softly, giving one of his wrists a squeeze. “We’ll talk to each other, this time. We’ve already proved we will.”

“And what about when I mess up again?” he says, voice trembling. “When I say something wrong, when I hurt you…”

“When _we_ mess up,” she says, twisting around in his arms to caress his face, “we’ll forgive each other, and find our way back.”

“...But how can you be so sure?” he asks, and his voice cracks. “How can you have so much faith in me?”

“Because you’re worth my faith,” she says, and presses a kiss to his ruined cheek. “Every time I thought you had done something unforgivable, you’ve come back and proven me so, so wrong. I cannot ignore that. And I just don’t have it in me to doubt you anymore.”

He can’t quite meet her eyes, but when she draws his face towards her he goes willingly, and when she touches a gentle kiss to his lips he sighs and kisses her back, tugging her a little closer until they’re pressed against one another. He curls his hands over the small of her back as she deepens the kiss, drawing him down into the heat of her desire, and if he hadn’t already been sitting down it would have taken him out at the knees.

But he _is_ sitting down, and she’s sitting in his lap, and when she rocks her hips against him he feels himself stirring to meet her. Their kisses grow feverish, their touches insistent, until she lines him up and sinks down onto him, drawing out relieved sighs from them both.

“ _Oh_ yes,” she whispers, head thrown back, and it’s all he can do to cradle her hips to steady her, a choked-off groan wrapped up in his throat. She finds one of his hands and laces their fingers together, not moving yet, cupping his jaw in her other trembling hand and pressing one last kiss to his lips.

Then she moves--just a single rock of her hips, a tiny flutter of her walls--and all of his control goes up in steam.

She yelps as he bucks up into her, setting a slow and grinding pace that has her crying out his name soon enough. He splays one hand over the small of her back and fists the other in her hair, buries his face in the crook of her neck, and fucks up into her with every ounce of longing he’s had coiled in the lines of his body. Her moans punctuate the snap of his hips, meeting him thrust for thrust, and before long she’s unwound his arms from her body and pinned them to the rock behind him, claiming his mouth in a searing, electric kiss.

“Agni, Katara,” he hisses, as she breaks away to nip at his jaw. He offers up fragments of wrecked praise, so caught up in bliss he can hardly form sentences, as she holds him down with gentle hands and wrings their pleasure out of them one gasp at a time. They move to the sloping edge of the spring where he can lay her down, and they take turns surrendering to one another, tender and achingly sweet.

When they tire of rocks digging into their backs, he wades into the deepest part of the spring and anchors her against him, thrilling at the way the new angle makes her gasp and keen and shiver. She starts to whimper, babbling his name into his neck, and when she falls apart in his arms he pauses just for a second to watch her lovely face.

“Zuko, _please_ , don’t stop,” she begs, rocking her hips against him to drive home her point, and so he picks up the pace, snarling into her shoulder as his fingers flex into her hips. She cries out, clinging to him and showering him with praise, and after everything it doesn’t take long for him to feel his own release build and crash over him, her name in his mouth as his vision goes white.

Afterward, he opens his eyes to find her clear blue gaze waiting for him, and in that moment looking at her feels like setting a joint back in place, like some agony he hadn’t known he’d been carrying is suddenly assuaged. One hand cups his cheek while the other feathers over his back; her legs are still wrapped around him, holding him in, and between the heat of the water and the orgasm he feels boneless, fuzzy, and impossibly light.

They settle in one of the rock seats carved into the spring, Katara curled up in his lap and fussing fondly with his hair. He doesn’t quite trust himself to speak yet, because the only thing he can seem to think is _wow_ , as he draws idle circles on her hip and sits in absolute contentment, such that he doesn’t quite catch what she says when she speaks.

“…Huh?” he says, drifting not quite to the surface of his foggy mind. She giggles.

“I asked if you were doing alright,” she says, nuzzling a kiss to his scarred cheek. “I’m gonna take that as a yes.”

“Hm? Oh. _Yeah_.”

She sighs happily, settling her head on his shoulder, and he lets himself drift for another moment.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” she hisses, scrambling up off his lap and out of the water, leaving him baffled and bereft.

“What’s—”

“Izumi,” she says, bending the water off her body with a flick of her wrist before snatching up her skirt.

“…what about her?”

“She’s probably still _awake_ ,” she hisses in a stage-whisper, hastily knotting the skirt around her waist before searching for her tunic. “And your Uncle is babysitting, and spirits-only-know what time it is. It’s a wonder he hasn’t sent out a search party.”

He snorts at the thought, standing to climb out of the spring and steaming the water off his body as he tracks down his clothes. “Considering how eager he is for us to _spend time together,_ I don’t think it’s any wonder at all.”

She chuckles, gathering up her discarded sarashi bindings and tucking them hastily under an arm. “Well, he might be reconsidering that, if she’s exhausted and refusing to sleep. Sokka offered to watch her for me once, when a girl went into labor in the middle of the night, but when I got back home the next day he looked like he’d gotten even less sleep than the father.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” he shrugs, smirking. She flashes him an amused grin as she tangles their fingers together, leading him out of the clearing and back down the hill towards the house.

The windows are mostly dark upon their approach, with only a single lantern lighting the entryway. Katara tiptoes in, brows pinched in confusion, as she listens for any sign of a fussy child or beleaguered grandparent. She ducks her head into the den where they’d last left Izumi and Uncle, giving a little gasp of surprise before a fond smile warms her face.

He glances over her head to catch sight of the pair curled up on the sofa, Izumi snuggled under Uncle’s arm and resting her head on his soft belly. Uncle is breathing deeply, head lolled and mouth open, bedtime scroll abandoned on the floor by his other hand.

“Guess I needn’t have worried,” she whispers, mirth curling the corners of her lips. She passes the entryway and starts up the stairs, but Zuko remains transfixed by the tableau, his chest tight and his eyes going misty and warm. 

“Do you think we should wake them?” Katara asks, pausing not even three steps up on the staircase. He glances back into the room to see Uncle has cracked an eye open, and he gives Zuko a wink, tapping a finger to his lips.

“No,” Zuko whispers back, following Katara to the stairs. “No, we’ll let them sleep.”

She gives him a warm smile, reaching for his hand again, and leads him up to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just the epilogue left now! Which makes me nervous, because it is still under construction, but I'm confident I'll have it up on Friday.
> 
> Thanks as ever to DisConsulate, who had to look at so many barely-discernable drafts of this, and gave me excellent feedback anyway.
> 
> Thank you to everyone from the bottom of my heart for reading along. Your comments mean the world to me, and I'm so glad that I've gotten to share this little story with you. It's brought me so much joy, both to write and to share.


	8. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All praise to DisConsulate, for practically wringing this epilogue out of me with his bare hands, and a thank you to all of you for your generous patience. Your comments and kudos kept me going when I ran low on steam.

The morning of his twenty-fifth jubilee breaks with a sort of cheerful ordinariness, and Zuko wakes just as he has every day for the past fifteen years: with the leap of his inner fire answering the call of Agni’s light, and with one of his lovely wife’s limbs digging into his back.

Katara is not an elegant sleeper--even less so now that the children are too old to join them in the bed. She’s fitful when she dreams, whining and kicking and punching as though she were engaged in battle in her dream world. Most of the time he finds it fiercely endearing, the way she twists herself up in the duvet, flopping onto her stomach and stuffing pillows under her chin. It’s less endearing when he comes to bed late and has to fight her for his ration of the blankets, but tussles over the sheets end up in intimate embraces as often as not, so even then, he can’t say he really minds.

He rolls her over, dislodging her elbow from his shoulder, and curls himself around her back, nosing at the spot where her shoulder becomes her neck. She sighs in her sleep, stretching back against him, and arousal uncurls low in his belly, quiet and slow. He feathers a hand over the curve of her hip, the silk of her nightgown coming with the pads of his fingers as he strokes back up, and when he smooths his hand back down again, it’s over her soft and bed-warmed skin.

When he presses another, more insistent kiss to her neck, she whines. “It’s so early…”

He hums in answer, tucking a kiss behind her ear, but then she turns in his arms, laying both her hands on his chest, and nuzzles her face under his chin. 

“Sleepy,” she murmurs, and he knows that this means  _ not now, but later,  _ and so he wraps his arms around her, pressing a kiss to her forehead, and lingers another minute or two before rolling out of the bed to dress.

***

He makes his way out into the meditation garden just as the sun is beginning to peek over the edges of the garden walls, settling in his customary spot and taking a few deep breaths, intentionally keeping himself from deep meditation, waiting for Izumi to join him. He feels the sunlight on his face, listens to the chirrups of bird-beasts nearby and the sound of the breeze whispering in the cinderblossom trees, just coming into their late summer bloom.

Long minutes pass, and concern starts to nudge at the edges of his concentration. Her absence is out of the ordinary. He stands, feeling the barest twinges of age in his joints, and goes off in search of his eldest daughter.

It’s not that he’s unaccustomed to meditating alone--as a child, Izumi had often spent long months away from home, visiting the South Pole with her mother or flying around with her uncle the Avatar, learning about her place in the world. Now, for the last two years, Izumi has been attending the University of Republic City, which was so recently chartered that they hadn’t even graduated their first class when she enrolled. Initially, it had been intended merely as a gesture of support and goodwill to both the University and the fledgling Republic, but then Izumi had fallen in love with University life, and had taken to her studies with such rapturous fervor that Zuko found himself staying up late to read dense texts on her favorite subjects just so he could understand the contents of her letters home.

But the University is in the midst of its summer recess, and Aang is in town for the jubilee celebration, and Izumi has never once missed a morning meditation she was well enough to attend. 

His investigation finds her still ensconced in her coverlet, burrowed in the darkest corner of her bed as though she were fleeing the little patch of sunlight that streams in from her eastern window. Her head shoots up from the bedding at the sound of her door sliding in the frame, and then she groans, retreating into her blankets again.

“Hey cinderblossom,” Zuko says, tiptoeing across the room. “Are you feeling okay?”

“No,” comes his daughter’s voice from the pile of blankets. “I’m fine, Dad.”

She misses the quirk of his eyebrow as he perches himself on the edge of her bed. “Well, which is it, sweetheart? Are you not okay, or are you fine?”

Izumi groans. “I’m tired.”

“I gather,” he says, patting around on her blankets and hoping to land on a shoulder or a knee. “You’re just not usually tired unless you’re sick. C’mere, let me feel your forehead.”

“I’m fine, Dad, you don’t have to fuss over me.”

“You want me to wake up your mom? Forehead, kiddo.”

Izumi pokes her head out of the blankets with a squinting glare, tugging her coverlet high around her neck in a way that reminds him of a cautious turtleduck poking its head out from its shell. Her complexion, usually warm and rich with youth, is pale and sallow, and her eyes are red and puffy with dark circles beneath. Her hair sticks out wildly, out of its usual sleeping braid, and he thinks he can see a smear of lip rouge still on the corner of her mouth. But her forehead is cool, if a little clammy, so he lets her retreat back into her blanket shell with a disapproving set to his mouth.

“See? I’m not sick. Happy?”

“Elated,” he deadpans. “What time did you go to sleep?”

“Does it matter?”

“Only so far as you know not to stay up so late again.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.” The blankets shift, and she groans again.

“What was it that kept you up so late, anyway?”

“...books.”

He snorts.

“It was!” she whines, indignant.

“I dare you to look me in the eye and say you stayed up all night because of a book, princess.”

She worms her face out of the covers again, still keeping the blankets drawn around her chin, and looks up at him with miserable, baleful gold eyes. “It was a book, Daddy,” she says softly, sounding very sad.

He frowns, stroking back her hair from her forehead. She looked too earnest to be lying through her teeth, but having been present for every one of her rebellious teen years, he senses there’s more to the story than she was letting on. Still, though, it wouldn’t get him anywhere to pry.

He cups her cheek, drawing a little circle with his thumb, and drops a kiss on her forehead. “Get some rest, kiddo. Make sure you get something to eat too, even if you miss breakfast.”

“I will, Dad,” she promises, already retreating into her blanket cave.

He shuts the door gently behind him, and finishes his exercises alone.

***

Family breakfast is a decidedly less solitary affair, even with Izumi conspicuously absent; usually he has a few minutes alone with his morning correspondence before she joins him, her morning ablutions evidently more time-consuming than his. Katara and Iroko often show up later still, and these days he’s lucky if he catches Kya for more than a brief hello in the mornings, as she prefers to sleep until the latest possible moment and sprint off to her morning lessons with her breakfast in one hand, bending the water from her hair with the other.

This morning, though, Uncle is already holding court in the dining room when Zuko arrives, entertaining the Avatar and his wife and cooing over the toddler in her arms. Katara trails in soon after that, with Iroko and Kya both, and they’re soon joined by her kin--Sokka and Suki and their brood. Even his father-in-law had made the journey north to eat his food and partake of the jubilee festivities, and also, most likely, to try to fleece Uncle in a few games of pai sho. Hakoda gives him a clap on the shoulder as he meanders behind him, and though he’s been family for fifteen years, such displays of masculine affection still make Zuko jump with something like alarm.

“And where is her Highness this morning?” Hakoda rumbles, having missed Zuko’s earlier explanations, stretching and folding his massive arms behind his head.

“Still in bed,” Zuko says. “Up late reading.”

“I thought you firebenders were up at the crack of dawn no matter what,” he says conversationally, only the barest edge of concern in his voice as he leans forward to load up his plate. “Must have been some book.” 

Kya stifles a choking noise that draws both her parents’ attention, though nobody else at the table seems to notice. Katara shoots him a glance--a tiny quirk of her eyebrow, subtle purse to her lips--that seems to say  _ she knows something.  _ He nods imperceptibly in agreement, and takes another deep sip off his tea.

The day’s festivities aren’t due to start for another couple hours, so the family breaks up to engage themselves in various amusements in the meantime. Zuko lingers in the breakfast room with his wife, nursing a pot of tea and enjoying the burgeoning quiet as their guests trickle out.

“What’s on your agenda this morning?” he asks, dividing the last of the tea in the pot between them, and wrapping his fingers around her cup to warm it. She sighs, sipping her tea.

“I still have a few exams to mark before grades are due next week. I was hoping to take some time this morning to finish those, before the madness well and truly descends.” She waves her hand to indicate the general merriment of the coming week, in which the jubilee celebration would roll right into the twenty-fifth anniversary of the treaty of Ba Sing Se and the end to the Hundred Year war.

“That’s a shame,” he says, voice lilting with mischief, “because I was hoping to persuade you to look over my speech.”

A private smile curls on her lips behind her teacup-- _ working on speeches  _ had become something of a code for them, especially while the girls had been young, and the only intimate moments they enjoyed were ones they could steal between appointments while the children were at their lessons. It remained a convenient shorthand.

“Well,” she says, a blush rising on her cheeks as her voice goes breathy. “I’m sure I’ve got a few minutes to help.”

And he can’t help but smile back as they drain their teacups, scramble up from their seats like youths, and link arms, swaggering back into the royal apartments. His wife has to stifle her giggles behind her hand as he rains kisses down on her cheek and neck, keeping quiet as they pass the children’s rooms on their way to their own suite at the end of the hall.

But then she stops outside Izumi’s door, shushing him with a finger on her lips, brow pinched in curiosity. The way the bright sunlight streams directly into the room casts shadows of the inhabitants upon the rice paper walls, and Izumi’s shadow is joined by another--Kya, he would guess, from the way she wore her hair. There’s fierce whispering coming from inside, and he quiets his breaths to eavesdrop.

“ _ Tui and La,  _ Zumi, did you get mauled by a moose-lion?”

“ _ Would you keep it down?! _ ”

“ _ Sorry,” _ Kya whispers back. “It’s just a little alarming! They didn’t look  _ nearly _ this bad last night!”

Katara shoots him a look, eyebrow quirked in question, and he shrugs.

“Let me see--” Izumi’s shadow gets up and retreats from view, and then from deeper in the room comes a hissed curse. “ _ Shit! _ I can’t go out in public like this! Mom’s gonna  _ kill _ me!”

“I  _ told _ you that you weren’t doing yourself any favors with the sake!” Kya chides as Izumi’s shadow crawls back onto the bed. “Mom says it makes bruising worse.”

Izumi’s voice is a growl. “Kya I swear to Agni if you love me at all you will  _ heal these things right now. _ ”

Kya’s shadow has her hands near her sister’s neck. “I’m  _ trying! _ ”

A hiss. “Ouch! That’s  _ cold! _ ”

“Well what else do you expect me to do?!”

“ _ Heal  _ them!”

“It’s bruising, Zumi--it’s not like a cut. I can’t just...Here, pass me that fan. Ice and scraping usually does the trick for me.”

“For  _ you?! _ What are  _ you _ doing getting hickies at your age?!”

“ _ Oh _ , so I’m old enough to drink with you, but not old enough to make out with somebody?”

Shock snaps through his veins, but as he opens his mouth to gasp Katara clamps her hand over it, shushing him with a pleading look.

“Who are you even making out  _ with _ ?!” Izumi cries, somehow still keeping her voice down. “Does the Royal Academy for Girls have mixed-gender dances now?!”

Kya’s shadow folds her arms. “Do you want my help or not?!”

Izumi huffs, relenting. “I don’t know if you  _ can _ help me,” she groans, as her shadow flops dramatically back onto her bed. “My neck is the least of my problems right now.”

Kya snorts. “Are you  _ actually _ whining about the guy right now?”

Izumi sighs. “I just thought he was  _ different… _ ”

“You want to take this one?” Katara whispers to him.

He shakes his head. “Boy problems. That’s your domain.”

She chuffs a laugh, giving him a playful glare and a shove of the shoulder. “Catch up with you later.”

He blows her a kiss, pacing backwards towards his study and chuckling at his daughters’ yelps of alarm, as their mother throws open the door without knocking.

***

A scant ten minutes later finds Zuko sitting at his desk, actually working on a speech he’s expected to give at the dedication of the new peace gardens later in the week, when Katara tiptoes in, shutting the door almost silently behind her.

“That was quick,” he says, not looking up.

“It’s not boy problems.”

His head snaps up. “What?”

Katara shrugs. “There was a boy problem, but that’s dealt with,” she says, perching on the edge of his desk in a way he has always found distracting. “It sounds like he showed her some of his family’s spoils from the war, and now she’s having an existential crisis.”

Zuko frowns. “That’s a new one,” he hums, leaning back in his chair. “You think I should go back in there?”

She shakes her head, stroking idly over his shoulders. “Give her some time to work through it herself. It might not be the sort of thing she needs us for.”

He considers this for a moment, a frown tugging at the corners of his lips. Katara threads her fingers through his silvering hair, combing out a tangle and stroking it down smooth.

“What’s that face for, my love?”

“I just...It’s still hard to imagine that there are things she doesn’t need us for. That one day she won’t need us at all.”

Katara gives him an incredulous smirk. “She hasn’t needed us for a while, Zuko.”

He sighs. “I know.”

“When you were her age, you’d already been Fire Lord for five years. When  _ I  _ was her age, I had a two year old.”

“I know, I know. And she’s brilliant and capable and fearlessly kind and she’d be a better leader than I ever was if she took the throne tomorrow, but she’s still  _ my little girl _ . If something’s hurting her, I just want to make it go away.”

“I know you do, sweetheart,” she says, cupping his chin in her hand. “And I get what you mean. But she can handle this. Just give her a little time.”

He considers this, nodding slowly, and lets his wife draw him in for a tender kiss, and then another, and then a third.

“How’s that speech coming?” she murmurs against his lips. He grins, looping his arms around her middle to tug her closer.

“It could use some work.”

***

Jubilee day festivities start an hour before noon with a parade through the decorated streets of Caldera City, which terminates at the largest courtyard adjoining the palace, already nearly full of revelers when the parade arrives. Zuko makes some short remarks reaffirming his dedication to his people before the Fire Sages lead a ceremonial Salutation to Agni at high noon. Sweat beads across the bridge of his nose and down the length of his spine as he tries not to buckle under the sticky late summer heat, until, furtively, his wife lays an ice-cold hand on the back of his neck. He cuts her an appreciative glance, catching sight of Iroko doing the same for her oldest sister. To his trained eye Izumi still looks a little rough around the edges--pale, drawn, dark circles under her made-up eyes--but she’s upright and smiling at her little sister, and his heart does the little skipping thing it does when he sees his children happy together. 

It’s a feeling he’s pleasantly used to.

The afternoon is eaten up by a quick rotation of smaller public appearances, with a couple of hours’ rest squeezed in before the jubilee gala being held that evening at the palace. 

Zuko hadn’t wanted a large to-do--twenty-five years of this nonsense, and he still wasn’t used to the pomp and circumstance, the simpering, the relentless  _ attention-- _ but his chief event planner had made a compelling argument in favor of a gathering some three months before.

Kya had blown into his study like a typhoon wind one afternoon, throwing open the double doors with both arms. This had startled him so completely that he’d jumped in his seat, knocking over his inkwell and spilling its contents over the latest revision of maintenance plans for the road and ferry network in the far northern reaches of the archipelago. He sighs privately at the loss; he’d really been looking forward to reading those.

“ _ What _ is this memo I’ve just received about cutting the guest list of the Jubilee gala down to  _ a hundred and fifty people?!” _

Zuko gingerly lifts the ruined scroll off his desk, tipping what ink remains puddled upon its surface back into the inkwell, his lips set in a thin frown. “Good afternoon to you too, Kya. I see you’ve adjourned your council meeting early.”

She had taken over event planning duties more or less by force--which he and Katara were mostly happy to let her do, as neither had particular enthusiasm for the task. She reminds him of his sister, sometimes, if Azula had received the love and affirmation she’d longed for as a child: Kya is willful, whip-smart, and graced with an easy confidence that makes her never shy with an opinion, good or bad. 

“Twenty-five years of peace and prosperity is a big deal,  _ Dad _ ,” she huffs, brandishing the memo he’d sent his event planning committee like a weapon. “And a ‘small, intimate’ party isn’t going to remind people of that!”

“Does it not matter what I want?” he asks, shuffling the ruined papers into his wastepaper basket and blotting up any remaining ink with a handkerchief. “It is a party for  _ me _ , after all.”

Kya narrows her eyes at him and tips up her delicate chin--a feature she’d gotten from him, and an expression she’d learned from her mother. “It’s a party for the crown,” she insists, folding her arms across her chest. “Not the man wearing it.”

“Speaking as the man wearing it, you’ll forgive me if I strain to see the difference.”

“Kya has a point, Dad,” Iroko pipes up, not looking up from the book she was reading in her armchair by the window. She’s long since made a habit of sitting in his study with him, doing her own schoolwork or silently entertaining herself, and though it’s a quiet, ordinary thing, it’s precious to him. “We don’t want to look like we’re minimizing the significance of the anniversary.”

“True,” he concedes, narrowing his eyes at his daughters. “But it  _ also _ won’t do to appear too celebratory. We were the aggressors in the war, after all, and the leaders of the other nations will be here to observe how we commemorate its ending.”

“ _ Exactly! _ ” Kya intones, hopping up to perch on the edge of his desk. “When’s the next time I’m going to get to throw a party with such a high-profile guest list?! When Zumi gets married?!” 

He rubs his temples, trying to pretend that  _ that _ particular event is further off than it was likely to be. “Kya I appreciate your input--yours too, Iko--but the one-fifty guest limit is firm. I can’t spend so much of the people’s tax money on an evening that only a privileged few will get to enjoy.”

Kya winds up to protest, prepared to shout him down, but her sister interrupts her.

“What if we built something instead?”

Kya and Zuko both turn their attention to Iroko, who has finally poked her head up from her book, and for a moment his head swims with how like her mother she looks, the only one of his girls who almost exclusively dresses in blue. 

“Build something?” he prompts. 

“ _ Instead?! _ ” Kya glowers.

Iroko shrugs. “Yeah. Well, instead of a big party--in addition to the small one, I mean. Like a public memorial garden, or something.” She places a mark in her book and folds it closed, cocking her head to the side in thought. “It would be a statement to show how much the anniversary matters to us, while also being something that lasts a long time, and that everyone can enjoy.”

“That’s…” Zuko furrows his brow, “a really good idea, actually. Good thinking, Iko.”

Kya rounds on him, a feral grin on her face, and grabs him by the collar of his robes. “Does this mean I get to plan a garden party too?” He takes a breath to rebuff her, but she bowls him over. “We’ll  _ have _ to have a dedication ceremony, Dad. You could make another speech!”

He glances back and forth between his younger daughters’ pleading faces, and sighs. “...Alright.”

“Yes!!” Kya crows, spinning around his desk to give him a tight hug. “I promise I won’t let you down, Dad!” And then, in a stage whisper, “I owe you one, Koko.”

And in a flash she’s gone again, most likely to reconvene her beleaguered council. She had some management skills yet to learn, he knew, but he knows she learns best by doing, and if her council members are rather more generously compensated than one might expect, well, that’s between him and the crown treasurer.

“Is it just me, or did you just trick me into agreeing to  _ two _ parties?” he says, pausing to squint at his youngest daughter, her book open again against her knees. She gives him a one-shoulder shrug.

“If she’s planning two parties, she’s going to be twice as busy, which means she’s bothering the rest of us half as often,” she says, ticking the reasons off on her fingers. “And, of course, she has to split the budget between the two events, which means they’ll both turn out more modest than they would have otherwise. It’s a classic win-win, Dad.”

He gives her a baffled, thoughtful frown. “It is, isn’t it?”

Iroko turns the page in her book.

“Remind me why I can’t put you on my council?”

She stifles a giggle at the inside joke. “I’m  _ twelve, _ Dad.”

“Hm,” he says, pretending to go back to work. “Is that young?”

“It’s nepotism.”

“Hm,” he says again. “Is that a bad thing?”

“ _ Yes _ .”

“Well,” he pretends to grouse, “I’d have somebody to tell me that, if you were on my council.”

That finally wins a trill of laughter from her, if accompanied by a dramatic eye roll, and something tight in his chest loosens. Having seen both of her sisters lapse into adolescence, he can’t say for how much longer she’ll still think he’s funny, and he’s determined to enjoy it while it lasts.

***

While it had been searing hot at the noontime Salutation to Agni, the heat mellows out in the evening, which is a boon, as Kya had decided to stage the Jubilee gala outdoors. She had broken with court event tradition, abandoning the grand ballroom in favor of a succession of smaller drawing rooms that opened into the largest palace garden, where she’d set out the food and drink. Instead of a formal meal, she’s had the kitchen serve a jaw-dropping spread of finger foods and munchables from all over the world, and in the garden setting, he finds the informality has a rather charming effect. 

The best part, in his opinion, is that there is no dais erected where he is expected to hold court, leaving him free to mill about the party among his guests, who have been mostly limited to family, friends, and those members of Fire Nation society that he actually  _ likes _ . He catches up with Aang and plays peek-a-boo with baby Tenzin, gets a sock in the arm from Toph for being an Old Man without her say-so, and lets Sokka ramble excitedly about his newest idea for making a machine that flies faster than a war balloon. (Zuko, having had a glass or two more of the punch than he’d intended, volunteers to help him build it, and the two are in the midst of logistical negotiations about the site of a workshop when Suki appears, hissing at her husband to  _ quit getting the Fire Lord drunk _ .)

He spots Katara across the garden laughing with the Ming siblings, with whose patronage she’d established the medical school that has become her life’s work. The research hospital attached to the school investigates the ways healing disciplines from different sorts of bending can work in tandem, both with one another and with non-bending medicine. Privately, he suspects its contributions to the field of medicine have done more for the international opinion of the Fire Nation than all the rest of his atonement policies combined, and he appreciates that. But mostly he appreciates the way Katara’s face lights up when she rambles about her work, excited about a new discovery or a successful trial. It is his greatest pleasure to see her happy.

Scanning the crowd, he finds his younger girls performing a bending routine by the duck pond. They are clumsily accompanied by their youngest cousin, Sokka’s boy, whose enthusiasm at being included outshines the fact that he does not know any of the steps. Watching makes him feel warm and a little choked-up, so he keeps watching them until he can swallow normally again.

He realizes that it’s been awhile since he’s seen Izumi, and he’s in the midst of searching for her among the party guests when there comes from his elbow an obsequious “Um…”

Zuko turns to see a young man bowing deeply at the waist, wearing formal burgundy silks and an expression somewhere between awe and mortification. “Fire Lord Zuko,” he stammers, “I was wondering--I wanted to thank you for inviting me this evening.”

“Stand up, kid, you’re making my back hurt just looking at you,” Zuko says, and the boy does, looking slightly less than relieved. “Forgive me, but you’ll have to jog my memory of your name,” he adds, though he is fairly certain he’s never seen this boy before in his life.

“Reiko, your Majesty,” he says, and between the name and the better view of the boy’s face, recognition flickers in the back of Zuko’s mind.

“Reiko,” he hums, rolling the name around in his mouth. “Are you the Agriculture Minister’s boy?”

“His nephew, your Majesty.”

“Of course. How silly of me. What can I do for you, Reiko?”

The boy swallows, looking somewhere approximately one foot to the left of Zuko’s face. “I was wondering if...if maybe you’d seen princess Izumi, lately?” 

That gives Zuko pause. His eyes flick to the boy’s collar, and now that he’s looking for it, he spots a well-concealed mark just peeking out. 

“I have some things I…” the boy continues, trailing off before changing course. “I can’t stop thinking about what she said, last ni--time we spoke. And I was hoping I might get a chance to apologize for being an idiot. And a brute.”

Zuko examines the youth before him, noting that he too has dark circles under his eyes, and looks otherwise profoundly troubled. He has a flash of empathy for the boy, remembering well what it feels like to be in his position, before recalling it’s  _ his little girl _ who’d put him there.

“I’ll pass it along,” he says, voice cool, nodding in finality. Reiko takes his cue and goes, and Zuko watches him for a minute, noting the dejection with which the boy wanders along, finds a secluded corner, and resumes his sulk.

He turns his mind again to the question of his missing daughter, probing at her absence like an aching tooth. She’s not in the habit of disappearing from formal events like this, so he doesn’t have a hit-list of usual places to check. He thinks back to what her mother had reported in his study that morning, about  _ spoils of war _ and  _ existential crises _ . 

Well. He knows where  _ he _ would go.

***

He slips from the party and makes his way through the palace to the western sanctum of the royal apartments, where the private ancestral shrines of the royal family make their home. He finds her seated in meditation before the shrine to Sozin, though she’s brought no offerings, and there’s a scowl on her face. His stomach twists in the way it always does when one of his girls looks upset, and some paternal instinct deep within him yearns to find whatever’s making her scowl and pluck it out like a splinter. A pang of nostalgia rolls over him--when she was younger, he could distract her with a mango slice, or read to her for a little bit, or play with one of her dolls to make her smile, but she’s grown now, and the sorts of things that make her upset these days are less easily solved.

He sits beside her a little ways away, breathing deeply and enjoying the quiet. The sky to the west has gone a brilliant orange, kissing the skiffs of clouds with daubs of peach and pink and lavender. It’s the sort of sky that never looks real in paintings, the sort you have to see to believe.

“Beautiful night out,” he says in lieu of a greeting. “Wouldn’t want you to miss it.” She sags, opening her eyes to give him a sheepish smile. 

“Hey Dad.”

“Hey cinderblossom,” he says gently. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she sighs, rubbing the back of her neck. “Just have some stuff on my mind.”

He hums, pausing to give her a wan smile. “Unorthodox choice,” he says, nodding at the shrine before her. “I find grandfather Roku much more soothing to talk to, personally.”

Izumi wrinkles her nose. “I’ve got some things I’d like to say to  _ grandfather Sozin _ ,” she admits, spitting out the name with venom. “Uncle Aang says there’s no bending in the spirit world, so I had to ask aunt Suki to show me how to throw a punch.”

He chuckles at the mental image afforded by that. “And? How’s it going?”

She pouts, unfolding herself from her meditation position to sit on her knees. “I haven’t gotten very far. Don’t think I have the spiritual ‘knack,’ or whatever.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. Nobody’s good at  _ every _ thing.”

She huffs a mirthless laugh and rolls her eyes. “Thanks, I think.” 

They lapse into silence for a moment, his eyes turned on the clouds and her fingers plucking at a blade of grass by her knee. 

“Do you have to get back to the party?” she asks, pinching her brows the same way her mother does. “Or can I have a minute of your time?”

“You can have all my time you need, kiddo,” he says, shifting in his seat to distract from the way his chest squeezes. “What are you thinking about?”

She sighs, drawing her lips together in a thoughtful purse. “How much did Mom tell you about where I was last night?”

“Not a lot,” he shrugs. “Just that there was a boy, but he wasn’t the real problem.”

“No,” she shakes her head, eyes downcast. “I guess he wasn’t.” She takes a deep breath to gather her thoughts, and the parent in him can’t help but wince as she cracks the knuckles on her right hand, one by one.

“So I went out last night to see this guy I used to know from the Royal Firebending Academy. He’s been sending me letters in Republic City, which I thought was sweet...”

She starts in on the knuckles on her left hand, and he has to bite his tongue to keep from interrupting.

“And he’s always seemed really nice, you know? Kind and smart, and just the sort of guy I always saw myself with, I guess. So he asks me to come over to see his library last night--”

“--Is that some sort of nerdy come-on?”

“ _ Agni _ , Dad!”

“You’re right!” He holds his hands up in surrender. “I probably don’t want to know. Pretend I never asked. You were saying?”

She huffs an exasperated sigh, and rolls her eyes. “Anyway--we  _ did _ actually end up checking out the library,  _ thank you very much _ , which was actually mostly cool--they have this really old copy of  _ Love Amongst the Dragons _ that they make you wear gloves to touch--” “--okay, yeah, that does sound cool, actually.”

“Right?!” she exclaims. “Couldn’t help but think of you, when I saw it.”

“Who did you say this young man was?” he asks. “Minister Reiko’s boy?”

Her face falls a little, and he feels his heart fall with it. “His nephew,” she sighs, and then her eyes go sharp. “Wait, how did  _ you _ know that?!”

“He came up to me about ten minutes ago at the party. Says he wants to apologize to you for something. I think I’m about to find out what.”

“...Of  _ course _ ,” she groans, scrubbing her hands down her face in something akin to embarrassment. “Of course he would ask  _ my dad  _ the _ Fire Lord _ to talk to me for him. I swear, he’s really smart and he’s really, really sweet, but the man has  _ no _ sense.”

Zuko gives her a one-shoulder shrug. “In my experience, most guys his age act like they’ve been kicked in the head at least sixty percent of the time. Just ask your mother. I was  _ much _ worse.”

That wins him a rueful little laugh, which she follows up with an eye roll and a sigh. “Yeah, well, don’t go getting attached to him yet, Dad,” she spits, disgust creeping into her voice. “Because the crowning jewel of their family library--the thing he was so excited to show me?--was a case, a  _ full case _ of stolen Air Nomad scrolls from the conquest.”

_ Ah _ , he thinks, his heart sinking.  _ That kind of existential crisis _ .

He watches her expression shift as her anger dries up, sloughs off, and reveals the fear and pain beneath. Her lower lip starts to tremble the way it did when she was little, and for a moment all he wants is to gather her up, hold her against his chest and let her cry until she feels better, because he  _ knows _ how she’s feeling--he’s felt it himself--and he doesn’t know how to fix this.

“I noticed they had these...flecks on them. At first I thought it was ink, you know?” she starts, her voice scraping in her throat. “But the way it was just...spattered, it seemed so odd, and that distracted me until I realized what it…” she swallows, swallows again, pressing her wrist against her mouth, and changes tack. “War is one thing. But what grandfather Sozin did to the Air Nomads…”

She gags, and his heart twists at the sound. “I know how you’re feeling sweetheart,” he says softly. “Believe me, I do.”

Izumi lowers her hands and takes a shuddering breath in. She’s gone pale again, and there’s blood welling on her bottom lip from where she’s bitten it. “I just can’t...he seemed so nice and normal, Dad, and then he just shows me those like they’re nothing? Like they’re something to  _ show off _ ?”

“I know,” he murmurs. “I know.”

She’s quiet for a moment, fists balled on her knees, jaw quivering with tension, and his chest goes tight watching her fight so hard to comport herself. It’s not that he’s never seen her upset--she’s human, and he’s her father--but this kind of emotion, raw and so tightly wound, is rare. His heart aches for her, and with her.

“You want a hug, kiddo?”

She sniffs, scrubbing her eye with the heel of her hand. “I’m fine, Dad,” she says hurriedly. “I think it’s just...I mean, how do you  _ stand _ it?”

“Stand what, sweetheart?”

“How do you answer for a hundred years of violence when your own people can’t even say it was  _ unjustified _ ?”

He takes a deep breath and holds it for a second--she’s always had a talent for asking impossible questions, ones that push him, that tip entire ways of thinking on their heads. He could be completely honest, could bare to her the howling in his own soul, but she deserves a better answer than that. 

Worried he’s been silent too long, he starts to talk. 

“I won’t lie to you. It’s not easy. But I--well, I like to think I do everything I can to help the people we hurt. Who are still hurting. Um...You know I do the budgets myself, so we can maximize the reparations we can pay, but it’s a balance. No sense inciting rebellion over taxes, which would probably end the reparations permanently...um, this wasn’t what you wanted to hear about, was it?”

“Not exactly,” she admits, tilting her head. “I meant more, how do you reckon with that legacy, you know? And how do you carry it for everybody else? Because it’s not just us who--everyone,  _ everyone _ has a history in this war. We all got stuck with its rotten consequences. For a while, I think, everyone was so focused on rebuilding that we didn’t think about the other stuff.”

“What other stuff, Izumi?”

She shrugs. “The guilt. The remorse. I don’t think you see it here the same way it exists in Republic City. What the war meant--what it still means to individuals there, you know. It feels different. The things we’re dealing with now, they’re not the sort of things that reparations and agricultural subsidies can fix.”

“Shame,” he jokes, but it falls flat. He clears his throat. “You seem to have given this quite some thought.”

She picks at the grass by her knees. “A little.”

“A little?”

“...Wrote a term paper about it, maybe.”

He smiles. “Well, that makes you the expert here, doesn’t it?”

She shakes her head, bashful. “It’s okay, Dad, you don’t--”

“No, I mean it,” he says. “If there’s something I can do that you think will help, I want to hear it.” He scoots a little closer to her, not quite near enough to touch her, but near enough that she wouldn’t have to come far to be in reach. “What’s your council, princess Izumi?”

“...Actually?”

“Actually.”

“I think you should talk about it.”

“About what, specifically?”

She frowns, thoughtful. “Guilt, I guess. Remorse. Just like...how you feel. What it feels like to carry on with this... _ History _ hanging over you, you know?”

He does his best not to blanch, but ends up swallowing too many times, his throat going dry. “You want me to talk about...feelings?” he asks. “Publicly?”

“I do,” she says. “I think if you...if the  _ Fire Lord _ can speak to the way a lot of people are feeling--remorseful, without personally being at fault--I think that might help a lot of people come to terms with our past. You know. Start to heal.”

He’s not comfortable with the idea, exactly--he’s hardly comfortable with expressing these feelings to his  _ daughter _ , let alone the whole country--but he trusts her judgement, and she’s looking at him with hope plain on her face, her gold eyes wide and puffy.

“I  _ am _ supposed to make some remarks at the opening of the Peace Gardens next week,” he says, stroking his chin. “Do you think you could help me draft something?”

Her face splits into a grin at that, and something tense in his heart goes slack; she leans up on her knees for a hug and he folds her in close, letting her tuck her head under his chin in a way she has since she was a little girl.

“Sure, Dad,” she says. “I’d be happy to help.”

***

Zuko’s day does not recover it’s routine until he peels back the duvet and slides into his bed, weary as much from the day’s excitement as the dimming of his inner fire in the night-time. Most nights it just makes him tranquil, the loss of Agni’s light, and he usually stays up reading while he waits for Katara to come to bed, but tonight she’d retired with him, evidently as exhausted from the day’s events as he was. She crawls in on the opposite side and snuggles in close, like always, nudging him to lift his arm so she can lay her cheek on his chest, and he nearly shivers as her cool breath feathers over his collarbones.

“Did you have a nice time tonight?” she asks, shifting even closer, her hand falling over the scar on his chest. “I feel like I hardly saw you.”

“I did,” he says, and then a beat later, realizes that he’s telling the truth. “Kya did a great job with this one.”

“She did, didn’t she?” Katara says, picking up her head a little to look at him. “Do you think the other girls had a nice evening? I noticed Izumi was gone for a little while there.”

Zuko hums. “I think she was still thinking about those things that were bothering her this morning,” he says, stroking his hand over her back. “Did you see that the boy was at the party tonight?”

Katara gives a sympathetic groan. “Poor thing. I would have hidden too.”

“Yeah, well, it was like you thought,” he says. “She had a lot more on her mind than the boy.”

“It sounds like you two talked?”

“We did. She had some tough questions for me about how I…” he sighs, grasping for the words as his exhaustion tugs them further and further away. “How I carry the weight of the war, I guess. She made some important points about how much further the people of the Fire Nation have to go, to come to terms with the legacy of our past. And she had some good ideas for what we can do to encourage that reckoning.”

“Huh,” Katara says. “Sounds like she read you the riot act.”

He huffs a little laugh. “Sort of. Not really though. It’s more…” he trails off, relishing the tender touch of his wife’s hand curling his hair over his ear, and he shudders a little at the sensation. “Sometimes she reminds me how good of a leader she’s going to be, and I get a little sad that I won’t get to see it.”

He feels Katara’s face scrunch against his chest. “Well, why wouldn’t you?”

“Because I’ll be  _ dead _ , Katara.”

“You could always retire, though, couldn’t you?” She sits up a little so she can see his face, and he can see the pinch in her brows he knew would be there. “You could abdicate in her favor, when she’s ready to ascend.”

Zuko frowns, considering it. “That’s not--I couldn’t just--” but he feels his arguments turning to ash in his mouth under her scrutiny, and sputters, “it just wouldn’t be  _ traditional _ .”

He knows what she’s going to say before she says it. “Zuko, you have spent the last twenty-five years dispensing with traditions that were stupid or harmful. Why not this one?”

He keeps frowning, even though the idea has started to grow on him. “I wouldn’t ever want to undermine her authority, but...I mean, I suppose  _ I _ wanted more guidance in my early years.”

“And,” she says, punctuating herself with a tap to his sternum. “You’d finally have time for all those hairbrained schemes of Sokka’s. And you could  _ actually attend _ every play in Caldera City.”

“We could spend some time in other parts of the Fire Nation, building those hospitals you’ve always dreamed of.”

She gives him a warm smile. “Or travel all over and see our friends, and it wouldn’t be some international big deal every time we did…”

“We could finally spend that winter in the south you’re always ribbing me about--”

“--I’m  _ telling _ you,” she insists, laughter bubbling in her chest. “You wouldn’t make it  _ two weeks _ \--”

“--I  _ would too _ ,” he spits back, and she retaliates with a tickle against his ribs. 

He lets out an undignified yelp, and they tussle for a moment until he has her pressed back on the mattress, wrists pinned and giggling. His eyes linger on the flush in her cheeks and neck, the way her chest heaves, and the mischievous glint in her eye, and he settles his knee between her thighs like a promise, sapping all the mirth from the room and leaving only simmering heat in its wake.

“It’s not time yet,” he murmurs, trailing the tip of his nose down the length of hers. “We’re all still young. But I promise I’ll think about it when it is.”

She pulls out of his hold to cup his cheeks, thumbing a circle over his scarred one. “Good,” she says. “See that you do.”

She draws him down to kiss her then, and he goes, the way he always goes to her. It feels inevitable, dependable, like the sun setting over the open ocean to the west. And like a sunset, she can draw him into her a thousand thousand times, and each time will have its own quiet sort of beauty, like the beauty of any ordinary, cherished thing. And so he goes to her, and when they come together, they know peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, dear reader, for sticking with this little story. You Zutarians have given me a very warm welcome back to fandom, and it will be my honor to write more for you in the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Updates Mondays and Fridays. Thank you for reading! Stay safe out there everyone!


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